Fantasy & Science Fiction v017n06 (1959 12) (PDF)

PDC

THE MAGAZINE OF

Fantasy and

Science Fiction

The Seeing (

TV commentary by

CHARLES BEAUMONT

What Now, Little Man? {novelet)

MARK CLIFTON

5

Science: Thin Air

ISAAC ASIMOV

34

The Terra-Venusian War of 1979 gerahd e. neyroud

45

State of Grace

MARCEL AYME

53

The Homing Instinct of Joe Vargo

{short novelet)

STEPHEN BARR

64

The Rainbow Gold

JANE RICE

80

Ferdinand Feghoot: XXI i

GRENDEL BRIARTON

89

Books: Near Misses from All Over

DAMON KNIGHT

90

Entertainment: The Seeing I CHARLES BEAUMONT

93

A Pride of Carrots

ROBERT NATHAN

100

Index to Volume XVII

130

In this issue . . . Coming next month ... 4

Cover hy Mel Hunter

(see 'In this issue . . ** for comment)

Joseph IV. Ferman, publisher Robert P. Mills, editor

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, V'olume 17, No. 6, Whole No. 103, DEC.
1959. Published monthly by Mercury Press, Inc., at 40f a copy. Annual subscription, $4.50
in U. S. and Possessions, and Canada. $5.00 in the Pan-American Union; $5.50 in all other
countries. Publication office. Concord, N. H. Editorial and general offices, 527 Madison
Avenue, New York 22, N. Y. Second class Postage paid at Concord, N. H. Printed in
U. S. A. (£) 1959 by Mercury Press, Inc. All rights, including translations into other
languages, reserved. Submissions must be accompanied by stamped, self-addressed enve^
lopes; the Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts.

Damon Knight, book editor Isaac Asimov, contributing saENCE editor
J. Francis McCotnas, advisory editor Ruth Ferman, circulation director

In this issue . . .

Mel Hunter s cover this month is the third in his series for F&SF con-
cerning the adventures of “the last man." The first, you may remember,
showed him tenderly watering a rose richly blooming in a desert waste-
land; in the second, he was wistfully poring through mail order cata-
logues he had unearthed in an old packing crate. As for his discovery
of the new Eve in his current adventure — Mr. Hunter is resolutely un-
communicative as to when, or even if, a marriage will take place. Follow
F&SF s covers faithfully so that you will be sure not to miss the next
disturbing installment. . . .

Charles Beaumont used to conduct a column in these pages called “The
Science Stage," in which he cast a discerning eye on the science fantasy
products of Hollywood — and generally found them wanting, euphe-
mistically speaking. Times have changed somewhat, however, and there
seems to be reason to hope that television producers may well be on
the verge of doing much letter by our field than they or the movie pro-
ducers have done in the past, and we have recalled the knowledgeable
and perceptive Mr. Beaumont to make a fresh survey. His new column,
'The Seeing I," will be appearing here from time to time, as circum-
stances in Holl>ivood and New York studios warrant.

Last July, we offered $100. to the reader with the best suggestion for
exploiting tlie curious properties of Stan Budzik’s machine in “Success
Story," by H. M. Sycamore. The response was large, and the suggestions
varied and ingenious; the judges had a most difficult time. In the end,
the check and our congratulations were sent to J. Martin Graetz, of
Cambridge, Mass. And to the rest of you who entered, we offer our
congratulations, too — on your inventive and competitive spirits. (Better
luck next time!)

Coming next month . . .

The Final Gentleman (short novelet)

The Only Game in Town

(a Time Patrol short novelet)

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

The Blind Pilot

translated from the French by

CLIFFORD SIMAK
POUL ANDERSON

HOLLEY CANTINE

CHARLES HENNEBERG
DAMON KNIGHT

It has been said of the retired personnel expert, Mark Clifton,
that each story he does is different in approach and style
from the last. There are two constants, however— Mr. Clifton
always has something to say, and he always says it in a way
to command the readers interest. The dramatic case in point
raises one of the most important questions we will face when
we go out in spaee; can you answer it?

What Now, Little Man?

by Mark Clifton

Tiie mystery of what made tiie
goonic tick tomK^ted me for
twenty years.

Why, when that first party of
big game hunters came to Libo,
why didn’t the goonies nm away
and liide, or fi^t back? Why did
they instantly, immediately, al-
most seem to say, ‘Tou want us
to die, Man? For you we will do it
gladlyl” Didn’t tliey have any
sense of survival at all? How could
a species survive if it lacked that
sense?

"Even when one of the hunters,
furious at being denied the thrill
of the chase, turned a machine
gun on the drove of tliem,” I said
to Paul Tyler, "they just stood
there and let him mow tliem
down.”

Paul started to say something in
quick protest, tlien simply looked
sick.

"Oh yes,” I assured him. "One of
them did just that. There was a
hassle over it. Somebody remind-
ed him that the machine gun was
designed just to kill human be-
ings, that it wasn’t sporting to turn
it on game. The hassle sort of took
the edge off their fun, so they
piled into their space yacht and
took off for some otlier place
where they could count on a chase
before the kill.”

I felt his sharp stare, but I pre-
tended to be engrossed in meas-
uring tlie height of Libo’s second
sun above the mountain range in
the west. Down below us, from
where we sat and smoked on Sen-
tinel Rock, down in my valley and
along the sides of the river, we
could see the goonie herds gath-
ering under their groves of pal
trees before night fell.

Paul didn’t take issue, or feed

5

6

me that line about harvesting the
game like crops, or this time even
kid me about my contempt for
Earthers. He was beginning to
realize that all the old timer Li-
boans felt as I did, and that there
was reasonable justification for do-
ing so. In fact, Paul was fast be-
coming Liboan himself. I prob-
ably wouldn’t have told him the
yam about that first hunting party
if I hadn’t sensed it, seen the way
he handled his own goonies, the
aflFection he felt for them.

‘‘Why were oiu: animals ever
called goonies, Jim?” he asked.
“They’re . . . Well, you know the
goonie.”

I smiled to myself at his use of
the possessive pronoun, but I did-
n’t comment on it.

“That too,” I said, and knocked
the dottle out of my pipe. “That
came out of the first hunting
party.” I stood up and stretched
to get a kink out of my left leg,
and looked back toward the house
to see if my wife had sent a goonie
to call us in to dinner. It was a lit-
tle early, but I stood a moment
to watch Paul’s team of goonies up
in the yard, still folding their
harness beside his rickashaw. Td
sold them to him, as yearlings, a
couple of years before, as soon as
their second pelt showed they’d
be a matched pair. Now they
were mature young males, and as
handsome a team as could be
found anywhere on Libo.

I shook my head and marveled.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

oh for maybe the thousandth time,
at the impossibihty of communi-
cating the goonie to anyone who
hadn’t seen them. The ancient
Greek sculptors didn’t mind com-
bining human and animal form,
and somebody once said the goon-
ie began where those sculptors
left oflF. No human muscle cultist
ever managed quite the perfect
symmetry natiual to the goonie—
grace without calculation, beauty
without artifice. Their pelts va-
ried in color from the silver blonde
of this pair to a coal black, and
tlieir huge eyes from the palest to-
paz to an emerald - green, and
from emerald green to deep-hued
amethyst. The tightly curled
mane spread down the nape and
flared out over the shoulders hke
a cape to blend with the short,
fine pelt covering the body. Their
faces were like Greek sculpture,
too, yet not human. No, not hu-
man. Not even humanoid, be-
cause— well, because that was a
comparison never made on Libo.
That comparison was one thing
we couldn’t tolerate. Definitely,
then, neither human nor human-
oid.

I turned fi'om watching the
team which, by now, had finished
folding their harness into neat
little piles and had stretched out
on the ground to rest beside the
rickashaw. I sat back down and
packed my pipe again with a
Libo weed we called tobacco.

“Why do we call them goc«i-

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

ies?’* I repeated Pauls question.
‘There’s a big bird on Earth. In-
habits some of the Soutli Sea is-
lands, millions of them crowd to
gether to nest Most stupid crea-
tiure on Earth, seems like, the way
they behave on their nesting
grounds. A man can hardly walk
among them; they don’t seem to
know enough to move out of the
way, and don’t try to protect
themselves or their nests. Some
reason I don’t know, it’s called the
Goonie Bird. Guess the way these
animals on Libo behaved when
that hunting party came and shot
them down, didn’t run away, hide,
or fight, reminded somebody of
that bird. The name stuck.”

Paul didn't say anything for a
while. Then he surprised me.

“It’s called the Goonie Bird
when it’s on the ground,” he said
slowly. “But in the air it’s the most
magnificent flying creature known
to man. In the air, it’s called the
albatross.”

I felt a chill. I knew the legend,
of course, the old-time sailor super-
stition. Kill an albatross and bad
luck will haunt you, dog you all the
rest of your days. But either Paul
didn’t know The Rime of the An-
cient Mariner or was too tactful
a young man to make it plainer. I
supplied the Libo colony witli its
fresh meat. The only edible ani-
mal on the planet w^as the goonie.

Carson’s Hill comes into tlie
yarn I have to tell— in a way is rc-

7

sponsible. Sooner or later almost
every young tenderfoot finds it,
and in his mind it is linked with
anguish, bitterness, emotional vio-
lence, suppressed fury.

It is a loioll, the highest point in
the low range of hills that sepa-
rates my valley from the smaller
cup which shelters Libo City. Hal
Carson, a buddy of mine in the
charter colony, discovered it. Flat
on top, it is a kind of granite table
surrounded by giant trees, which
make of it a natural amphitlieatre,
almost like a cathedral in feeling.
A young man can climb up there
and be alone to have it out wdth
liis soul.

At one time or another, most do.
“Go out to the stars, young man,
and grow up with the universer
the posters say all over Earth. It
has its appeal for the strongest,
the brightest, the best. Only the
dull-eyed breeders are content to
stay at home.

In the Company recruiting of-
fices they didn’t take just any-
body, no matter what his attitude
was— no indeed. Anybody, for ex-
ample, who started asking ques-
tions about how and when ho
might get back home— with the
fortune he w^ould make— was cold-
ly told that if he were already
w’orrying about getting back he
shouldn’t be going.

Somehow, the young man was
never quite sure how, it became a
challenge to his bravery, his dar-
ing, his resourcefulness. It w’as a

8

bait which a young fellow, anx-
ious to prove his masculinity, the
most important issue of his life,
couldn't resist. The burden of
proof shifted from the Company
to the applicant, so that where he
had started out cautiously in-
quiring to see if this offer mi^t
suit him, he wound up anxiously
trying to prove he was the one
they wanted.

Some wag in the barracks scut-
tlebutt once said, ‘They make you
so afraid they wont take you, it
never occurs to you tliat you'd be
better off if they didn't."

“A fine mess,” somebody else
exclaimed, and let a httle of his se-
cret despair show through. ‘To
prove you are a man, you lose the
reason for being one.”

That was the rub, of course.

Back when man was first learn-
ing how to misuse atomic power,
everybody got all excited about
the effects of radiation on germ
plasm. Yet nobody seemed much
concerned over the effects of un-
shielded radiation in space on
that germ plasm— out from under
the protecting blanket of Earth's
atmosphere, away from the nat-
ural conditions where man had
evolved.

There could be no normal col-
ony of man here on Libo— no chil-
dren. Yet the goonies, so unspeak-
ably resembling man, could breed
and bear. It gave the tenderfoot
a smouldering resentment against
the goonie which a psychologist

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

could have explained; that wild,
unreasoning fury man must feel
when frustration is tied in witli
prime sex— submerged and fester-
ing because simple reason told the
tenderfoot that the goonie was
not to blame.

The tide of bitterness would
swell up to choke the young ten-
derfoot there alone on Carson's
Hill. No point to thinking of home,
now. No point to dreaming of his
triumphant retinn— space-burnt,
strong, virile, remote udth tlic
vastness of space in his eyes—
ever.

Unfair to the girl he had left
behind that he should hold her
with promises of loyalty, the girl,
with ignorance equal to his own,
w^ho had urged him on. Better to
let her think he had changed,
growm cold, lost his love of her—
so that she could fulfil her func-
tion, turn to someone else, some
damned Company reject— but a
reject who could still father chil-
dren.

Let them. Let them strain them-
selves to populate tlie universe!

At this point the angry bitter-
ness would often spill over into
unmanly tears (somebody in the
barracks had once said that Car-
son's Hill should be renamed Cr>'-
ing Hill, or Tenderfoot's Lament).
And the tortured boy, despising
himself, would gaze out over my
valley and long for home, long for
the impossible undoing of what
had been done to him.

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

Yes, if there hadn't been a Car-
son s Hill there wouldn't be a yam
to telL But then, almost ev^
place has a Carson s Hill, in one
form or another, and Eartliers re-
main Earthers for quite a while.
They can go out to tlie stars in a
few days or weeks, but it takes a
little longer before they begin to
grow up with the universe.

Quite a little longer, I was to
find. Still aliead of me, I was to
have my own bitter session there
again, alone— an irony because Td
thought rd come to terms with
myself up tliere some twenty
years ago.

It is the yoimg man who is as-
sumed to be in conflict with his
society, who questions its moral
and ethical stmctures, and yet I
wonder. Or did I come of age late,
very late? Still, when I look back,
it was the normal thing to accept
things as we found them, to be so
concerned with things in their re-
lationship to us that we had no
time for wonder about relation-
ships not connected with us. Only
later, as man matures, has time to
reflect— has sometliing left over
from the effort to survive. . . ,

When I first came to Libo, I ac-
cepted the goonie as an animal, a
mere source of food. It was Com-
pany policy not to attempt a col-
ony where there was no chance
for self-support Space shipping-
rates made it impossible to supply
a colony with food for more tlian

9

a short time while it was being es-
tablished. Those same shipping
rates make it uneconomical to
ship much in the way of machin-
ery, to say nothing of luxuries. A
colony has to have an indigenous
source of food and materials, and
if any of that can also be turned
into labor, all the better. I knew
that. I accepted it as a matter of
course.

And even as I learned about my
own dead seed, I learned that the
same genetic principles applied
to other Earth life, that neither
animal nor plant could be expect-
ed to propagate away from Earth.
No, the local ecology had to be
favorable to mans survival, else
no colony. I accepted that, it was
reasonable.

The colony of Libo was com-
pletely dependent on the goonie
as the main source of its food. Tlie
goonie was an animal to be used
for food, as is the chicken, the
cow, the rabbit, on Earth. The
goonie is beautiful, but so is the
gazelle,, which is delicious. The
goonie is vaguely shaped like a
human, but so is the monkey which
was once the prime source of pro-
tein food for a big part of Earth s
population. I accepted all that,
witliout question.

Perhaps it was easy for me. I
was raised on a farm, where
slaughtering of animals for food
was commonplace. I had the av-
erage farm boys contempt for the
dainty young lady in the fashion-

10

able city restaurant who, without
thought, lifts a bite of rare steak,
dripping with blood, to her pearly
teeth; but who would turn pale
and retch at the very thought of
killing an animal. Whore did she
tliink that steak ciime from?

At first we killed the goonies
around our encampment which
was to become Libo City; went
out and shot them as we needed
them, precisely as hunters do on
Earth. In time we had to go far-
ther and farther in our search for
them, so I began to study them, in
hope I could domesticate them.
I learned one of their peculiari-
ties—they were completely de-
pendent upon the fruit of the pal-
tree, an ever-bearing tree. Each
goonie had its o\mi pal tree, and
we learned by experiment that
they would starve before they
\\T)uld eat the fruit from any other
pal tree.

There was anotlier peculiarity
which don't yet understand,
and yet we see it in rudimentary
fonn on Earth where game breeds
heartily dming seasons of plenti-
ful food, and sparsely in bad
\ears. Here, the goonie did not
bear young unless there were un-
claimed pal trees aviiilable, and
did bear young up to the limit of
such trees.

My future was clear, then. Ob-
tain the kind and plant the pal
trees to insure a constant supply
of meat for the colony. It was the
farm lx)y coming out in me, no

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

doubt, but no different from any
farm boy who grows up and wants
to own his own farm, his own cat-
tle ranch.

I was a young man trying to
build a secure future for himself.
There was no thought of the goon-
ie except as a meat supply. I ac-
cepted that as a matter of course.
And as Libo City grew, I contin-
ued to increase my planting of pal
trees in my valley, and my herds
of goonies.

It was only later, much later,
that I found the goonie could also
be trained for work of v^arious
lands. I accepted tliis, too, in the
same spirit we trained colts on the
farm to ride, to pull the plow, to
work.

Perhaps it was tliis training,
only for the crudest tasks at first,
then later, calling for more and
more skill, that proved my undo-
ing. On the farm we separated our
pet animals from the rest; we
gave our pets names, but wc never
gave names to those destined for
slaughter, nor fonned any affec-
tion for them. This was taboo. I
foimd myself carr)Tng out the
same procedures here. I separated
those goonies I trained from the
meat herds. Then I separated the
common labor goonies from the
.skilled labor.

I should have stopped there-
at least there. But when man s cu-
riosity is aroused. . . . Can we
say to the research scientist, ‘Tou
may ask tliis question, but you are

11

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

forbidden to ask that one. You
may take this step, but you must
not take a second, to see what lies
beyond.” Can we say that to the
human mind? I did not say it to
myself.

I taught certain goonies to
speak, to read, to write.

The goonies accepted this train-
ing in the same joyful exuberance
they accepted everything else
from man. I never understood it,
not until now. Their whole behav-
ior, their whole being seemed tlie
same as greeted the first hunting
party. “You want us to die, man?
For you, we wdll do it gladly.”

Whatever man wanted, the
goonie gave, to the limit of liis ca-
pacity. And I had not found that
limit.

I took one step too many. I
know that now.

And yet, should I not have tak-
en that last step— teaching them
to speak, to read, to write? The
capacity was in them for learning
it all the time. Was it finding it
out that made the diflFerence? But
what kind of moral and etliic
structure is it that depends on ig-
norance for its support?

Miriam Wellman comes into
the yam, too. She was the cata-
lyst. My destruction was not her
fault. It would have come about
anyway. She merely hastened it.
She had a job to do, she did it
well. It worked out as she planned,
a cauterizing kind of thing, burn-

ing out a sore that was beginning
to fester on Libo— to leave us
hurting a little, but clean.

Important though she was, she
still remains a little hazy to me, a
little unreal. Perhaps I was al-
ready so deep into my quandary,
without knowing it, that both peo-
ple and things were a httle hazy,
and the problem deep withm me
iny only reality.

I was in Libo City the day she
landed from the tender that serv-
iced the planets from the motlier
ship orbiting out in space. I saw
her briefly from the barbershop
across the street when she came
out of the warehouse and walked
down our short main street to tiie
Company Administration Build-
ing. She was a dark-haired little
thing, sharp-eyed, neither young
nor old— a crisp, efficient career
gal, she seemed to me. I didn’t see
any of tlie men on the street make
a pass at her. She had the looks,
all riglit, but not the look.

There weren’t more than a doz-
en women on the whole planet,
childless women who had fore-
gone having children, who had
raked up the exorbitant space fare
and come on out to join their man
anyhow; and the men shoidd hav^e
been falling all over Miriam Well-
man— but they weren’t. They just
looked, and then looked at each
other. Nobody whistkxl.

I got a little more of what had
happened from the head ware-
houseman, vv^ho was a friend of

12

mine. He smelled something
\vrong, he said, the minute the
tender cut its blasts and settled
do\^Ti. Usually there’s joshing, not
alwa> s friendly, between the ten-
der crew and the warehouse crew
— tlie contempt of tlic spaceman
for the landbound; the scorn of
tlie landlx)und for the glamorboy
spacemen who tliink their sweat
is wino.

Not today, Tlio pilot didn’t
come out of his cabin at all to
stretch his legs; he sat there look-
ing straiglit aliead, and tlie ships'
crew started hustling the dock
loaders almost before the hatches
opened for imloading a few sup-
plies and loading our packages of
libolines— the jewel stone whidi
is our excuse for Ix^ing.

She came down tlie gangplank,
he said, gav^c a crisp-careless flick
of her hand toward the pilot, who
must ha\'C caught it out of the cor-
ner of his eye for he nodded brief-
ly, formally, and froze. Later we
learned he was not supposed to
tell us who she really was, but he
did his best. Only we didn’t catch
it.

Slic came across tlie yard with
all the human warehousemen star-
ing, but not stepping toward her.
Only tlie goonies seemed un-
awaie. In their fashion, laughing
and playing, and still turning out
more work than humans could,
they were already cleaning out
the holds and trucking the sup-
plies over to the loading dock.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

She came up the little flight of
stairs at the end of the dock and
approached Hal, the head ware-
houseman, who, he said, was by
tliat time bugeyed.

"Do you always let those crea-
tures go around stark naked?” she
asked in a low, curious voice. She
waved toward tlic gangs of goon-
ies.

He managed to get his jaw un-
lunged enough to stammer.

‘"\Vhy, Ma’am,” he says he said,
"they’re only animals.”

Nowdays, when he tells it, lie
claims he saw a t\\inkle of laugh-
ter in her eyes. I don’t believe it.
She was too skilled fn the part she
was playing.

She looked at him, she looked
back at the goonies, and she
looked at him again. By tlien he
said he was blushing all over, and
sweating as if the dr>' air of Libo
was a steam room. It wasn’t any
trick to see how she was compar-
ing, what she was thinking. And
every stranger was wam^, be-
fore he landed, that the one tiling
the easy-going Liboan wouldn’t
tolerate was comparison of goonie
uuth man. Beside them we looked
raw, unfinished, poorly done by an
amateur. There was only one way
we could bear it— there could be
no comparison.

He says he knows ho turned
purple, but l>efore he could think
of anything else to say, she swept
on past him, tlirougli the main
aisle of the warehouse, and out the

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

front door. All he could do was
stand there and try to think of
some excuse for Uving, he said.

She had that effect on people—
she cut them down to bedrock
with a word, a glance. She did it
deliberately. Yes, she came as a
Mass Psyxihology Therapist, a
branch of pseudo-science current-
ly epidemic on Earth which be-
lieved in the value of emotional
purges whipped up into frenzies.
She came as a prime trouble-
maker, as far as we could see at
the time. She came to see that the
dear, fresh boys who were swarm-
ing out to conquer the universe
didn’t fall into the evil tempta-
tions of space.

She came at the critical time.
Libo City had always been a
small frontier spaceport, a lot like
the old frontier towns of primitive
Earth— a street of warehouses,
commissaries, an administration
building, couple of saloons, a
meeting hall, the barracks, a
handful of cottages for the men
with wives, a few more cottages
built by pairs of young men who
wanted to shake ficc of barracks
life for a while, but usually went
back to it. May lx? there should
have been anotlicr kind of House,
also, but Eiuth was having anoth-
er of its periodic moral spasms,
and the old women of the male
sex who comprised the Com-
pany’s Board of Directors tlirew
up their hands in hypocritical hor-
ror at the idea of sex where there

13

was no profit to be made from the
sale of diapers and cribs and pap.

Now it was all changing. Libo
City was mushrooming. The Com-
pany had made it into a shipping
terminal to serve the network of
planets still out beyond as the
Company extended its areas of
exploitation. More barracks and
more executive cottages were go-
ing up as fast as goonie labor
could build them. Himdreds of
tenderfoot Earthers were being
sliipped in to handle the clerical
work of the terminal. Hundreds
of Earthers, all at once, to bring
with them their tensions, their
callousness, swaggering, boasting,
cruelties and sadisms which were
natural products of life on Earth—
and all out of place here where
we’d been able to assimilate a
couple or so at a time, when there
hadn’t been enough to clique up
among themselves; they’d had to
learn a life of calmness and rea-
son if tliey wanted to stay.

Perhaps Miriam Wellman was a
necessity. The dear, fresh boys
filled the meeting hall, overflowed
it, moved the nightly meetings to
the open ground of the landing
field. She used every emotional
trick of the rabble-rouser to whip
them up into frenzies, made them
drunk on emotion, created a scene
of back-pounding, shouting, jitter-
ing maniacs. It was a good lesson
for anybody who might believe in
the progress of the human race
toward reason, intelligence.

14

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

I had my doubts about the value
of what she was doing, but for
what it was, she was good. She
knew her business.

Paul Tyler put the next piu-t of
the pattern into motion. I hadn’t
seen him since our talk about the
first hunting party, but when we
settled down in our living room
chairs witli our pipes and our tall
cool glasses, it was apparent he’d
been doing some thinking. He
started ofiF obliquely.

‘'About three years ago,” he
said, as he set his glass back do^\^l
on the table, “just before I came
out here from Earth, I read a book
by an Australian hunter of kanga-
roos,”

The tone of his voice made it
more than idle comment. I wait-
ed.

“This fellow told the reader, ev-
ery page or so, how stupid the
kangaroo is. But everything he
said showed how intelligent it is,
how perfectly it adapts to its nat-
ural env^iromnent, takes every ad-
v^antage. Even a kind of rough
tribal organization in the herds, a
recognized tribal ownership of
lands, battles between tribes or in-
dividuals that try to jToach, an or-
ganized initiation of a stray be-
fore it can be adopted into a
tribe.”

“Then how did he justify call-
ing it stupid?” I asked.

“Mavbc the real question is
‘Why?^' ”

“You answer it,” I said.

“The economy of Australia is
based on sheep,” he said. “And
sheep, unaided, can’t compete
with kangaroos. The kangaroo’s
teeth are wedge shaped to bite
clumps, and they can grow fat on
new growth while sheep are still
down into the heart of grass
unable to get an>i:liing to eat. The
kangaroo’s jump takes liim from
clump to sparse clump where the
sheep will walk himself to deatli
trying to stave oflE starv^ation. So
the kangaroo has to go, because it
interferes witli man’s desires.”

“Does that answ er ‘Why?’ ” I
asked.

“Doesn’t it?” he countered.
“They have to keep it killed oflF,
if man is to prosper. So they have
to deprecate it, to keep their con-
science clear. If w^e granted the
goonie equal intelhgence wdtli
man, could we use it for food?
Enslave it for labor?”

I was quick wdtli a denial.

“The goonie was tested for in-
telligence,” I said sharply. “Only
a few months after the colony was
founded. The Department of Ex-
traterrestrial Psychology sent out
a team of testers. Their work w'as
exhaustive, and their findings un-
equivocal.”

“This w^as before you trained
goonies for work?” he asked.

“Well, yes,” I conceded. “But as
I understood it, their findings ran
deeper than just breaking an ani-
mal to do some work patterns. It

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

had to do with super-ego, con-
science. You know, we Ve never
seen any evidence of tribal organ-
ization, any of the customs of the
primitive man, no sense of awe,
fear, worship. Even their mating
seems to be casual, without sense
of pairing, permanence. Hardly
even herd instinct, except that
they grouped where pal trees
clustered. But on their own, undi-
rected, nobody ever saw them
plant the pal tree. The psycholo-
gists were thorough. They just
didn’t find evidence to justify call-
ing the goonie intelligent.”

“That was tv^enty years ago,” he
said. “Now they understand our
language, complicated instruction.
You’ve taught them to speak, read,
and write.”

I raised my blows. I didn’t think
anyone knew about that except
Ruth, my wife.

“Ruth let tlie cat out of the bag,”
he said with a smile. “But I al-
ready knew about the speaking.
As you say, the goonie has no fear,
no conscience, no sense of con-
cealment. They speak around
anybody. You can’t keep it con-
cealed, Jim.”

“I suppose not,” I said.

‘Which brings me to the point.
Have you gone a step farther?
Have you trained any to do cleri-
cal work?”

“Matter of fact,” I admitted. “I
have. The Company has sharp
pencils. If I didn’t ke^ up my
records, they’d take the fillings out

15

of my teeth before I knew what
was happening. I didn’t have hu-
mans, so I trained goonies to do
the job. Under detailed instruc-
tion, of course,” I added.

“I need such a clerk, myself,” he
said. ‘There’s a new oflBce man-
ager, fellow by name of Carl Hest.
A— well, maybe you know the
kind. He’s taken a particular dis-
like to me for some reason— well,
all right, I know the reason. I
caught him abusing his rickashaw
goonie, and told him off before I
laiew who he was. Now he’s get-
ting back at me through my re-
ports. I spend more time making
corrected reports, trying to please
him, than I do in mining libolines.
It’s rough. I’ve got to do some-
thing, or he’ll accumulate enough
evidence to get me shipped back
to Earth. My reports didn’t matter
before, so long as I brought in my
quota of libolines— tlie clerks in
Libo City fixed up my reports for
me. But now I’ve got to do both,
witli every T crossed and I dot-
ted. It’s driving me nuts.”

“I had a super like that when I
was a Company man,” I said, with
sympathy. “It’s part of the nature
of the breed.”

‘Tou train goonies and sell them
for all other kinds of work,” he
said, at last. “I couldn’t afford to
buy an animal trained that far,
but could you rent me one? At
least while I get over this hump?”

I was reluctant, but then, why
not? As Paul said, I trained goo-

16

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

nies for all other lands of work,
why not make a profit on my
clerks? What was the difference?
And, it wouldn’t be too hard to re-
place a clerk. They may have no
intelligence, as the psychologists
defined it, but they learned fast,
needed to be shown only once.

‘'About those kangaroos,” I said
curiously. “How did that author
justify calling them stupid?”

Paul looked at me with a Httle
frown.

“Oh,” he said, “Various ways.
For example, a rancher puts up a
fence, and a chased kangaroo will
beat himself to death trying to
jump over it to go through it.
Doesn’t seem to get the idea of go-
ing around it. Things like that.”

‘ Does seem pretty stupid,” I
commented.

“An artificial, man-made bar-
rier,” he said. “Not a part of its
natural environment, so it can’t
cope with it.”

“Isn’t that the essence of intel-
ligence?” I asked. “To analyze new
situations, and master them?”

“I^ooking at it from man’s defin-
tion of intelligence, I guess,” he
admitted.

“What other definition do we
have?” I asked. . . .

I went back to the rental of the
goonie, then, and we came to a
mutually satisfactory figure. I was
still a little reluctant, but I couldn’t
have explained why. There was
something about the speaking,
reading, wTiting, clerical work— I

was reluctant to let it get out of
my own hands, but reason kept
asking me why. Pulling a ricka-
shaw, or cooking, or serving the
table, or building a house, or wTit-
ing figures into a ledger and add-
ing them up— what difference?

In the days that followed, I
couldn’t seem to get Pauls conver-
sation out of my mind. It wasn’t
only that I’d rented him a clerk
against my feelings of reluctance.
It was something he’d said, some-
thing about the kangaroos. I went
back over the conversation, recon-
structed it sentence by sentence,
until I pinned it down.

“Lool^g at it from man’s defini-
tion of intelligence,” he had said.

“What other definition do we
have?” I had asked.

What about the goonie’s defini-
tion? Tliat was a silly question. As
far as I knew, goonies never de-
fined anything. They seemed to
live only for the moment. Perhaps
the unfaihng supply of fruit from
their pal tree, the lack of any natu-
ral enemy, had never tauglit them
a sense of want, or fear. And
therefore, of conscience? Tliere
was no violence in their nature, no
resistance to anything. How, then,
could man ever hope to under-
stand the goonie? All right, per-
haps a resemblance in physical
shape, but a mental Ufe so totally
alien. . . .

Part of the answer came to me
then.

Animal psychology tests, I rea-

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

soned, to some degree must be
based on how man, himself, would
react in a given situation. The ani-
mals intelligence is measured
largely in terms of how close it
comes to the behavior of man. A
man would discover, after a few
tries, that he must go around the
fence; but the kangaroo couldn't
figure that out— it was too far re-
moved from anything in a past ex-
perience which included no fenc-
es, no barriers.

Alien beings are not man, and
do not, cannot, react in the same
way as man. Man's tests, there-
fore, based solely on his own
standards, will never prove any
otlier intelligence in the imiverse
equal to man's own!

The tests were as rigged as a
crooked slot machine.

But the goonie did learn to go
around the fence. On -his own? No,
I couldn't say that. He had the
capacity for doing what was
shown him, and repeating it when
told. But he never did anything
on his own, never initiated any-
thing, never created anything. He
followed complicated instructions
by rote, but only by rote. Never as
if he understood the meanings,
the abstract meanings. He made
sense when he did speak, did not
just jabber like a parrot, but he
spoke only in direct monosylla-
bles— the words, themselves, a
part of the mechanical pattern. I
gave it up. Perhaps the psychol-
ogists were right, after all.

17

A couple of weeks went by be-
fore the next part of the pattern
fell into place. Paul brought back
the goonie clerk.

“What happened?" I asked,
when we were settled in the liv-
ing room with drinks and pipes.
“Couldn't he do the work?"

“Nothing wrong ^vith the goo-
nie," he said, a little sullenly. “I
don't deserve a smart goonie. I
don't deserve to associate with
grown men. I'm still a kid with no
sense.”

“Well now," I said with a grin.
“Far be it from me to disagree with
a man's own opinion of himself.
What happened?"

“I told you about this Carl Hest?
The OflBce Manager?"

I nodded.

“This morning my montlily re-
ports were due. I took them into
Libo City with my libolines. I
wasn't content just to leave them
with tlie receiving clerk, as usual.
Oh, no! I took them right on in to
Mr. High-and-mighty Hest, him-
self. I slapped them down on his
desk and I said, ‘All right, bud, see
what you can find wrong with
them this time.'"

Paul began scraping the dottle
out of his pipe and looked at me
out of the comer of his eyes.

I grinned more broadly.

“I can understand,” I said. “I
was a Company man once, my-
self."

“This guy Hest," Paul continued
“raised his eyebrows, picked up

18

the reports as if they'd dirty his
hands, flicked through them to
find my dozens of mistakes at a
glance. Then he went back over
them—slowly. Finally, after about
ten minutes, he laid them down on
his desk. ‘Well, Mr. Tyler,’ he said
in that nasty voice of his, What
happened to you? Come down
with, an attack of intelligence?’

“I should have quit when my
cup was full,” Paul said, after I’d
had my laugh. “But oh, no. I had
to keep pouring and mess up the
works— I wasn’t thinking about
anything but wiping that sneer off
his face. ‘Those reports you think
are so intelligent,’ I said, were
done by a goonie,’ Then I said,
real loud because the whole office
was dead silent, ‘How does it feel
to know that a goonie can do this
work as well as your own suck-up
goons— as well as you could, prob-
ably, and maybe better?*

“I walked out while his mouth
was still hanging open. You know
how the tenderfeet are. They pick
up the attitude that the goonie is
an inferior animal, and they ride
it for all it’s worth; they take easily
to having something they can push
around. You know, Jim, you can
call a man a dirty name with a
smile, and he’ll sort of take it;
maybe not quite happy about it
but hell take it because you said it
right But here on Libo you don’t
compare a man with a goonie— not
anytime, no how, no matter how
you say it.”

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

“So then what happened?” I’d
lost my grin, suddenly.

“It aD happened in front of his
office staff. He’s got a lot of those
suck-ups that enjoy his humor
when he tongue-sldns us stupid
bastards from out in the field.
Their ears were all flapping. They
heard the works. I went on about
my business around town, and it
wasn’t more than an hour before I
knew I was an untouchable. The
word had spread. It grew with the
telling. Maybe an outsider would-
n’t get the full force of it, but here
in Libo, well you know what it
would mean to tell a man he could
be replaced by a goonie.”

“I know,” I said around the stem
of my pipe, while I watched his
face. Something had grabbed my
tailbone and was twisting it wtli
that tingling feeling we get in the
face of danger. I wondered if Paul
even yet, had fully realized what
he’d done.

“Hell! All right, Jim, goddamn
it!” he exploded. “Suppose a goo-
nie could do their work better?
That’s not going to throw them
out of a job. Tliere’s plenty of
work, plenty of planets besides
this one— even if the Company
heard about it and put in goonies
at the desks.”

“It’s not just that,” I said slowly.
“No matter how low down a man
is, he’s got to have something he
thinks is still lower before he can
be happy. The more inferior he is,
the more he needs it. Take it away

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

from him and you’ve started some-
thing.”

“I guess,” Paul agreed, but I
could see he had his reserve of
doubt. Well, he was young, and
he’d been fed that scout-master
line about how noble mankind is.
He’d learn.

‘"Anyhow,” he said. “Friend of
mine, better friend than most. I’ve
found out, tipped me oflE. Said I’d
better get rid of that goonie clerk,
and quick, if I knew which side
was up. I’m still a Company man,
Jim. I’m like the rest of these poor
bastards out here, still indentured
for my space fare, and wouldn’t
know how to keep alive if the
Company kicked me out and left
me stranded. That’s what could
happen. Those guys can cut my
feet out from imder me eveiy step
I take. You know it. What can I do
but knuckle under? So— I brought
the goonie back.”

I nodded.

“Too bad you didn’t keep it un-
der your hat, the way I have,” I
said. “But it’s done now.”

I sat and thought about it. I
wasn’t worried about my part in it
—I had a part because everybody
would know I’d trained the goonie,
that Paul had got him from me. It
wasn’t likely a little two-bit oflSce
manager could hurt me with the
Company. They needed me too
much. I could raise and train, or
butcher, goonies and deliver them
cheaper than they could do it
themselves. As long as you don’t

19

step on their personal egos, the big
boys in business don’t mind slap-
ping down their underlings and
telling them to behave themselves,
if there’s a buck to be made out of
it.

Besides, I was damn good ad-
vertising, a real shill, for their re-
cruiting oflSces. “See?” they’d say.
“Look at Jim MacPherson. Just
twenty years ago he signed up
with the Company to go out to the
stars. Today he’s a rich man, inde-
pendent, free enterprise. What he
did, you can do.” Or they’d make
it seem that way. And, they were
right. I could go on being an inde-
pendent operator so long as I kept
off the toes of the big boys.

But Paul was a different matter.

“Look,” I said. “You go back to
Libo City and teU it around that it
was just a training experiment I
was trying. Tliat it was a failure.
That you exaggerated, even lied,
to jolt Hest. Maybe that’ll get you
out from under. Maybe we won’t
hear anymore about it.”

He looked at me, his face strick-
en. But he could still try to joke
about it, after a fashion.

“You said everybody finds some-
thing inferior to himse,f,” he said.
“I can’t think of anything lower
than I am. I just can’t”

I laughed.

“Fine,” I said with more hearti-
ness than I really felt. “At one time
or another most of us have to get
clear down to rock bottom before
we can begin to grow up.”

20

I didn't know then that there
was a depth beyond rock bottom,
a hole one could get into, with no
way out. But I was to learn.

I was wrong in telling Paul we
wouldn't hear anything more
about it. I heard, ihe very next
day. I was down in the south val-
ley, taking care of the last plant-
ing in the new orchard, when I
saw a caller coming down the dirt
lane between the groves of pal
trees. His rickashaw was being
pulled by a single goonie, and
even at a distance I could see the
animal was abused with over-
work, if not worse.

Yes, worse, because as they
came nearer I could see whip
welts across the pelt covering the
goonie's back and shoulders, I be-
gan a slow boil inside at the need-
less cruelty, needless because any-
body knows the goonie will kill
himself with overwork if the mas-
ter simply asks for it. So my caller
was one of the new Earthers, one
of the petty little squirts who had
to demonstrate his power over the
inferior animal.

Apparently Ruth had had the
same opinion for instead of treat-
ing the caller as an honored guest
and sending a goonie to fetch me,
as was Libo custom, she'd sent
him on down to the orchard. I
wondered if he had enough sense
to know he'd been insulted. I
hoped he did.

Even if I hadn't been scorched

F.\NTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

to a simmering rage by the time
the goonie halted at the edge of
the orchard— and sank down on
the ground without even unbuck-
hng his harness— I wouldn't have
liked the caller. The important
way he climbed down out of the
rickashaw, the pompous stride he
affected as he strode toward me,
marked him as some petty Com-
pany oflBcial.

I wondered how he had man-
aged to get past Personnel. Usu-
ally they picked the fine, upstand-
ing, cleancut hero type— a little
short on brains, maybe, but full of
noble derring-do, and so anxious
to be admired they never made
any trouble. It must have been
Personnel's off day when this one
got through— or maybe he had an
uncle.

“Afternoon," I greeted him,
without friendliness, as he came
uP;

“I see you're busy," he said
briskly. “I am, too. My time is
valuable, so I'll come riglit to the
point. My name is Mr. Hest. I'm
an executive. You're MacPher-
son?"

“Mister MacPherson,” I an-
swered drily.

He ignored it.

“I hear you've got a goonie
trained to bookkeeping. You
leased it to Tyler on a thousand-
dollar evaluation. An outrageous
price, butd'll buy it. I hear Tyler
turned it back."

I didn't hke what I saw in his

21

WIIAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

eyes, or his loose, fat-lipped
mouth. Not at all.

‘‘The gooTiie is unsatisfactory,” I
said. ‘‘The experiment didn’t work,
and he’s not for sale.”

“You can’t kid me, MacPher-
son,” he said. “Tyler never made
up those reports. He hasn’t the
capacity. I’m an accountant. If
you can train a goonie that far, I
can train him on into real account-
ing. The Company could save
millions if goonies could take the
place of humans in oflBce work.”

I knew there were guys who’d
sell their own mothers into a two-
bit dive if they thought it would
impress the boss, but I didn’t be-
lieve this one had that motive.
Tliere was something else, some-
thing in the way his avid little
eyes looked me over, the way he
licked his lips, the way he came
out with an explanation that a
smart man would have kept to
himself.

“Maybe you’re a pretty smart
accountant,” I said in my best hay-
seed drawl, “but you don’t know
anything at all about training goo-
nies.” I gestured with my head.
“How come you’re overworking
your animal that way, beating liim
to make him run up those steep
liills .on those rough roads? Can’t
you aflFord a team?”

“He’s my property,” he said.

‘Tfou’re not fit to own him,” I
said, as abruptly. “I wouldn’t sell
you a goonie of any kind, for any
price.”

Either the man had the hide of
a rhinoceros, or he was driven by a
passion I couldn’t understand.

“Fifteen hundred,” he bid. “Not
a penny more.”

“Not at any price. Good day,
Mr. Hest.”

He looked at me sharply, as if
he couldn’t believe I’d refuse such
a profit, as if it were a new experi-
ence for liim to find a man without
a price. He started to say some-
thing, then shut his mouth with a
snap. He turned abruptly and
strode back to liis rickashaw. Be-
fore he reached it, he was shouting
angrily to his goonie to get up out
of that dirt and look alive.

I took an angry’ step toward
them and changed my mind.
Whatever I did, Hest would later
take it out on the goonie. lie
was that kind of man. I
stopped, too, by the old Lil)o-
an custom of never meddling in
another man’s affairs, lliore
weren’t any laws about Iiandling
goonies. We hadn’t needed tliein.
Disapproval had been enough to
bring tenderfeet into line, before.
And I hated to see laws like tliat
come to Libo, morals-meddling
laws— because it was men like
Hest who had the compulsion to
get in control of making and en-
forcing them, who liid behind the
badge so they could get tlieir
kicks without fear of reprisal.

I didn’t know what to do. I w’ent
back to planting the orchard and
wwked until the first sun had set

22

and the second was close behind.
Then I knocked oflF, sent the goo-
nies to their pal groves, and went
on up to die house.

Ruth s first question, when I
came through the kitchen door,
flared my rage up again.

she said curiously, and a
little angry, “Why did you sell that
clerk to a man like Hest?”

“But I didn’t,"' I said.

“Here’s the thousand, cash, he
left widi me,” she said and pointed
to the comer of the kitchen table.
“He said it was the price you
agreed on. He had me make out a
bill of sale. I thouglit it peculiar
because you always take care of
business, but he said you wanted
to go on working.”

“He pulled a fast one, Ruth,” I
said, my anger rising.

“What are you going to do?” she
asked.

“Right after supper I’m going
into Libo City. Bill of sale, or not.
I’m going to get that goonie back.”

“Jim,” she said. “Be careful.”
There was worry in her eyes.
“You’re not a violent man--and
you’re not as yoimg as you used to
be.”

lliat was something a man
would rather not be reminded of,
not even by his vdfe— especially
not by his wife.

Inquiry in Libo City led me to
Hest’s private cottage, but it was
dark. I couldn’t rouse any re-
sponse, not even a goonie. I tried

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

the men’s dormitories to get a line
on him. Most of the young Earth-
ers seemed to think it was a lark,
and their idea of good sportsman-
ship kept them from telling me
where to find him. From some of
them I sensed a deeper, more tur-
gid undercurrent where good,
clean fun might not be either so
good or so clean.

In one of the crowded saloons
there was a booth of older men,
men who’d been here longer, and
kept a disdainful distance away
from the new Eartliers.

“There’s something going on,
Tim,” one of them said. “I don’t
Icnow just what. Try that hell-
raisin’, snortin’ female. Hest’s al-
ways hanging around her.”

I looked around the booth. They
were all grinning a little. So the
story of how Hest had outfo.xed
me had spread, and they could en-
joy that part of it. I didn’t blame
them. But I could tell they didn’t
sense there was anything more to
it than that. They told me where
to locate Miriam Wellman’s cot-
tage, and added as I started to
leave:

‘Tou need any help, Jim, you
know where to look.” Part of it was
to say that in a showdown against
the Earthers they were on my
side, but most of it was a bid to get
in on a little fun, break the monot-
ony.

I found the woman’s cottage
without trouble, and she answered
the door in person. I told her who

WHAT NOW^ LITTLE MAN?

23

1 was, and she invited me in witli-
out any coy implications about
what the neighbors miglit think.
The cottage was standard, fur-
nished with goonie-made furniture
of native materials.

'I'll come right to the point,
Miss Wellman,” I said.

"Good,” she answered crisply.
“The boys will be gathering for
their meeting, and I like to be
prompt.”

I started to tell her what I
thought of her meetings, how
much damage she was doing, how
far she was setting Libo back. I
decided tliere wouldn't be any
use. People who do that kind of
thing, her kind of thing, get their
kicks out of the ego-bloating effect
of their power over audiences and
don’t give a good goddamn about
how much damage tliey do.

"I’m looking for Carl Hest,” I
said. "I understand he’s one of
your apple-polishers.”

She was wearing standard cov-
erall fatigues, but she made a ges-
ture as if she were gathering up
folds of a voluminous skirt to show
me there was nothing behind
them. ‘T am not hiding Carl Hest,”
she said scornfully.

"Then > ou know he is hiding,” I
paused, and added, "And you
probably know he conned my
wife out of a valuable goonie. You
probably know what he’s got in
mind to do.”

"I do, Mr. MacPherson,” she
•said crisply. "I know very well.”

I looked at her, and felt a deep
discouragement. I couldn’t see any
way to get past that shell of hers,
that armor of self righteousness—
No, that wasn’t it. She wasn’t
quoting fanatic, meaningless
phrases at me, clouding the issue
with junk. She was a crisp busi-
ness woman who had a situation
well in hand.

‘Then you know more than I
do,” I said. "But I can guess some
things. I don’t like what I can
guess. I trained that goonie. I’m
responsible. I’m not going to have
it— well, whatever they plan to do
witli it— just because I trained it
to a work that Host and his toad-
ies don’t approve.”

"Very commendable senti-
ments, Mr. MacPherson,” she said
drily. "But suppose you keep out
of an affair that’s none of your
business. I understood that was
Liboan custom, not to meddle in
other people’s doings.”

"That ivas the custom,” I said.

She stood up suddenly and
walked \\Tth quick, short strides
across the room to a closet door.
She turned around and looked at
me, as if she had made up her
mind to sometliing.

"It’s still a good custom,” she
said. "Believe it or not. I’m trying
to preserv^e it.”

I looked at her dumbfounded.

"By letting things happen,
whatever’s going to happen to
that goonie?” I asked incredulous-
ly. "By coming out here and whip-

24

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

ping up the emotions of these
boys, stirring up who knows what
in them?’'

She opened the door of tlie
closet and I could see she was tak-
ing out a robe, an iridescent,
shimmering thing.

'1 know precisely what I’m stir-
ring up,” she said. “That’s my busi-
ness. That’s what I’m here for.”

I couldn’t believe it. To wliip
up tlie emotions of a mob just for
tlie kicks of being able to to do it '
was one thing. But to do it delib-
erately, knowing the eflFect of
arousing primitive savagery. . . .

She turned around and began
slipping into the garment. She
zipped up tlie front of it with a
crisp motion, and it transformed
her. In darkness, under the proper
spotlights, the ethereal softness
completely masked her calculating
efficiency.

‘Why?” I demanded. “If you
know, if you really do know,
why?”

“My work here is about fin-
ished,” she said, as she came over
to her chair and sat down again.
“It will do no harm to tell you
why. You’re not a Company man,
and your reputation is one of dis-
cretion. . . . The point is, in mass
hiring for jobs in such places as
Libo, we make mistakes in Per-
sonnel. Our tests are not perfect.”

“We?” I asked.

“I’m a trouble-shooter for Com-
pany Personnel,” she said.

“All this miimbo-jumbo,” I said.

“Getting out there and whipping
these boys up into frenzies . . .”

‘Tou know about medical in-
noculation, vaccination,” she said.
“Under proper controls, it can be
psychologically applied. A little
virus, a little fever, and from there
on, most people are immune.
Some aren’t. With some, it goes
into a full stage disease. We don’t
know which is wliich N\nthout
test. We have to test. Those who
can’t pass the test, Mr. MaePher-
son, are shipped back to Earth.
This way we find out quickly, in-
stead of letting some Typhoid
Marys gradually infect a whole
colony.”

“Rest,” I said.

“Hest is valuable,” she said. “He
thinks he is transferred often be-
cause we need liim to set up pro-
cedures and routines. Actually it’s
because he is a natural focal point
for the wrong ones to gather
round. Birds of a feather. Sending
him out a couple months in ad-
vance of a troubleshooter saves us
a lot of time. We already know
where to look when we get there.”

“He doesn’t catch on?” I asked.

“People get blinded by their
own self importance,” she said.
“He can’t see beyond himself.
And,” she added, “we vary our
techniques.”

I sat there and thought about it
for a few minutes. I could see the
sense in it, and I could see, in the
long run, how Libo would be a
better, saner place for the innocu-

25

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN ?

lation that would make the better-
balanced Earthers so sick of this
land of thing they’d never want
any more of it. But it was damned
cold-blooded. These scientistsi
And it was aside from tlie issue of
my goonie clerk.

‘'All riglit/' I said. “I guess you
know v'hat you’re doing. But it
happens Tm more interested in
that goonie clerk.”

“That goonie clerk is anotlier
focal point/* she said. “I\'e been
waiting for some such incident.**

“You might have waited a long
time;'* I said.

“Oh, no,** she answered. “There’s
always an incident. We wait for a
particularly effective one.”

I stood up.

‘Tou*d sacrifice the goonie to
the job > ou*re doing,” I said.

'Tes,** she said shortly. “If it
were necessary,” she added.

“You can find some other inci-
dent, tlien,” I said. “I don’t intend
to sec that goonie mistreated,
maybe worse, just to get a result
for )'ou.**

She stood up quickly, a flash of
sliimmering light.

'Tou wall keep your hands en-
tirely off it, Mr. MaePhorson,” she
said crisply. “I do not intend to
have my work spoiled by amatem*
meddling. I’m a professional. Tins
kind of thing is my business. I
know how to handle it. Keep off,
Mr. MaePherson. You don’t real-
ize how much damage you could
do at tliis point.”

“I’m not a Company man, Miss
Wellman,” I said hotly. “You can’t
order me.”

I turned around and stalked
out of her door and went back to
the main street of town. It was
nearly deserted now. Only a few’
of the older hands were sitting
around in the saloons, a few so dis-
gusted witli the frenetic meetings
they w’ouldn’t go even to break
the monotony.

I went over to tlie main w^arc-
house and tlirough the gate to the
landing field. Tlie crowal w^as
tliere, sitting around, standing
around, moving aroimd, waiting
for the show to start. At the far
end there was a platform, all
liglited up witli floods. It was bare
except for a simple lectern at the
center. Very effective. Miss Well-
man hadn’t arriv’ed.

Maybe I could spot Hest some-
where up near the platform.

I threaded my way througli the
crow’d, tlirough knots of yoimg
Eartlicrs vv^ho were shooting the
breeze about happenings of the
day, the usual endless gossii:) over
trivialities. For a while I couldn’t
pin it down, tlie sometliing that
was lacking. Tlien I realized that
the rapt, trance-like hypnotism I
expected to see just wasn’t there.
The magic was wearing off. It was
at this stage of tlie game that a
smaii rabble-rouser would move
on, would sense die satiation and
leave while he was still aliead, be-
fore ever>’body began to realize

26

Jiow temporary, pointless and
empty the whole emotional binge
had been. As Miss Wellman had
said, her work here was about fin-
ished.

But I didn’t spot Hest any-
where. I moved on up near the
platform. There was a group of
five at one comer of the platform.

‘'Where could I find Mr. Hest?”
I asked them casually.

They gave me the big eye, tlie
innocent face, the don’t-know
shake of the head. They didn’t
know. I turned away and heard a
snicker. I whirled back around
and saw only wooden faces, the
sudden poker face an amateur
puts on when he gets a good hand
—later he wonders why every-
body dropped out of the pot.

I wandered around some more.
I stood on the outside of little
knots of men and eavesdropped. I
didn’t hear anything of value for a
wliilo.

It wasn’t until there was a buzz
in tlie crowd, and a spotliglit
swept over to the gate to highlight
Miss Wellman’s entrance that I
heard a snatch of phrase. Maybe
it was the excitement that raised
that voice just enough for me to
hear.

. . Carson’s Hill tonight . •

“Shut up, you fool!”

There was a deep silence as the
crowd watched Miss Wellman in
her sliimmering robe; she swept
down tlie path tliat opened in
front of her as if she were floating.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

But I had the feeling it was an ap-
preciation of good showmanship
they felt. I wondered what it had
been like a couple of weeks back.

But I wasn’t waiting here for
anything more. I’d got my answer.
Carson’s Hill, of course! If Hest
and his gang were staging another
kind of show, a private one for
their own enjoyment, Carson’s Hill
would be the place. It fitted— the
gang of juvenile delinquents who
ai*e compelled to bum down the
school, desecrate the chapel, stab
to death the mother image in
some innocent old woman w'ho
just happened to walk by at the
wrong moment— wild destruction
of a place or symbol that repre-
sented inner travail.

I was moving quickly through
the crowd, the silent crowd. There
was only a low grumble as I
pushed somebody aside so I could
get through. Near the edge I
heard her voice come through the
speakers, low and thrilling, dulcet
sweet.

“My chilchen,” she began, “to-
night’s meeting must be brief.
This is farewell, and I must not
biuden you with my grief at leav-
ing you . . .”

I made the yard gate and ran
down the street to where my
goonie team still waited beside
tlie rickashaw'.

“Let’s get out to Carson’s Hill as
fast as we can,” I said to the team.
In the darkness I caught the an-
swering flash of their eyes, and

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

heard the soft sound of harness be-
ing slipped over pelt. By the time
I was seated, they were away in a
smart mile-covering trot

Miriam Wellman had been
damned sure of herself, burning
her bridges behind her while Hest
and his rowdies were still on the
loose, probably up there on Car-
son’s Hill, torturing that goonie
for their o^vn amusement. I won-
dered how in hell she thought
that was taking care of an>thing.

The road that led toward home
was smooth enough for a while,
but it got rough as soon as the
goonies took the trail that
branched off toward Carson’s Hill.
It was a balmy niglit, warm and
sweet with the fragrance of pal
tree blossoms. The sky was full of
stars, still close, not yet faded in
the liglit of the first moon that was
now rising in the East. It was a
world of beauty, and the only flaw
it in was Man.

In the starlight, and now the in-
creasing moonlight Ciuson’s Hill
began to stand fortli, blocking off
the stars to the west. In the black-
ness of that silhouette, near its
crest, I seemed to catch a hint of
reddish glow— a fiie had been
built in the ampithcatre.

Farther along, where tlie steep
climb bc‘gan, I spoke softly to the
team, had them pull off tlie path
into a small grove of pal trees.
From hero on the path w^ound
around and took fore\’er to get to

27

die top. I could make better time
with a stiff climb on foot. Avoid
sentries, too— assuming they’d had
enough sense to post any.

The team seemed uneasy, as if
diey sensed my tenseness, or knew
w^hat was happening up there on
top. We understood them so little,
how could we know what the
goonie sensed? But as always they
w'ere obedient, anxious to please
man, only to please him, whatever
he wanted. I told them to conceal
tliemselves and wait for me. They
W’^ould.

I left the patii and struck off in a
straight line toward die top. The
going wasn’t too bad, at first. Wide
patches of no trees, no under-
growdi, open to the moonlight. I
worried about it a little. To any-
one watching from above I w^ould
be a dark spot moving against the
light-colored grass. But I gambled
they would be too intent witli
their pleasures, or would be
watching only the path, w^hich
entered the grove from the other
side of die hill.

Now I was high enough to look
off to the south-east where Libo
City lay. I saw^ the lights of the
mainstreet, tiny as a relief map. I
did not see the bright spot of the
platform on the kmding field. Too
far away to distinguish, something
blocking my view^ at that point
. . . or w^as die meeting already
over and the landing field dark?

I plimged into a thicket of vines
and brush. The advantage of con-

28

cealnient was offset by slower
climbing. But I had no fear of los-
ing my way so long as I climbed,
Tlie glow of light was my beacon,
but not a friendly one. It grew
stronger as I climbed, and once
tlicre ^^"as a shower of sparks
^vafting upward as though some-
tody had disturbed tlie &e. Dis-
turbed it, in what way?

I realized I was almost running
up the hill and gasping for breath.
The sound of my feet was a loud
rustle of leaves, and 1 tried to go
more slowly, more quietly as I
neared the top.

At my first sight of flickering
raw flame through the trunks of
trees, I stoi^ped.

I had no plan in mind. I wasn’t
fool enough to tliink I could plow
in there and fight a whole gang of
crazed sadists. A fictional hero
would do it, of course— and win
without mussing his pretty hair. I
was no such hero, and nobody
knew it better than I.

Wliat would I do then? Try it
an>^way? At my age? Already
panting for breath from my climb,
from excitement? Maybe from a
fear that I wouldn’t admit? Or
would I simply watch, horror-
stricken, as witnesses on Earth had
watched crazed mobs from time
immemorial? Smely man could
have found some way to leave his
barbarisms back on Earth, where
they were normal.

I didn’t know. I felt compelled
t(' steal closer, to see what was

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

happening. Was this, too, a part of
the human pattern? Tlie horror-
stricken \vltness, powerless to
turn away, powerless to intervene,
appalled at seeing tlie human be-
ing in the raw? To carry the scar
of it in his mind all tlie rest of his
days?

Was this, too, a foim of partici-
pation? And from it a land of in-
verse satisfaction of superiority to
the mob?

What the hell. I pushed my wa\^
on through tlie last thickets, on to-
ward the flames. I didn’t know I
was sobbing deep, wracking
coughs, until I choked on a liic-
cou^. Careful MaePherson!
You’re just asking for it. How
would you like to join the goonie?

As it was, I ahnost missed the
climax. Five minutes more and
I would have found only an empty
glade, a fire starting to bum lower
for lack of wood, trampled grass
between the crevices of flat gran-
ite stones.

Now from where I hid I saw hu-
man silhouettes limned against
the flames, moving in random
patterns. I drew closer and clos-
er, dodging from tree to tree.
Softly and carefully I crept closer,
until the blackness of silliouette
gave way to the color-tones of
firelight on flesh. I could hear the
hoarseness of their passion drunk
voices, and crept stiU closer until 1
could distinguish words.

Yet in this, as in the equally bar-
baric meeting I’d left, something

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

was missing. There wasn't an ex-
perienced lyncher among them.
At least Personnel had had the
foresight to refuse the applica-
tions from areas where lynching
was an endemic pleasure. The
right words, at the right time,
would have jelled thought and ac-
tion into ultimate sadism, but as it
was, the men here milled about
uncertainly— driven by the desire,
the urge, but not knowing quite
how to go about it . . . the ado-
lescent in his first sex attempt.

'"Well lets do something,” one
voice came clearly. "If hangings
too good for a goonie that tries to
be a man, how about burning?”

“Let s skin him alive and auction
off the pelt. Teach these goonies a
lesson.”

I saw the goonie then, spread-
eagled on the ground. He did not
struggle. He had not fought, nor
tried to run away. Natiurally; he
was a goonie. I felt a wave of re-
lief, so strong it was a sickness.
That, too. If he had fought or tried
to run away, they \^^ouldn't have
needed an experienced lyncher to
tell them what to do. The opposi-
tion would have been enough to
turn them into a raving mob, all
acting in one accord.

And tlien I knew. I knew the an-
swer to the puzzle that had tor-
tured me for twenty years.

But I was not to tliink about it
further tlien, for the incredible
happened. She must have left only
moments after I did, and I must

29

have been hesitating there, hiding
longer than realized. In any
event, Miriam Wellman, in her
shimmering robe, walking as
calmly as if she were out for an
evening stroll, now came into the
circle of firelight.

“Boys! Boys!” she said com-
mandingly, chiding, sorrowfully,
and without the slightest tremor of
uncertainty in her v^oice. "Aren’t
you ashamed of yoiuselv^es? Teas-
ing that poor animal that way?
Cutting up the minute my back is
turned? And I trusted you, tool”

I gasped at the complete inade-
quacy, the unbelievable stupidity
of the woman, unprotected, walk-
ing into tlie middle of it and
speaking as if to a roomful of
kindergarten kids. But these w^re
not kids! They were grown human
males in a frenzy of lust for killing.
Neither fire hoses, nor tear gas,
nor macliinegun bullets had
stopped such mobs on Earth.

But she had stopped them. I
realized they were standing there,
shock still, agape with consterna-
tion. For a tense ten seconds tliey
stood there frozen in tableau,
while Miss Wellman clucked her
tongue and looked about with ex-
asperation. Slow ly the tableau be-
gan to melt, amost imperceptibly
at first— the droop of a shoulder,
die eyes that stared at the ground,
one sheepish, foolish grin, a toe
that made little circles on the
rock. One, on the outskirts, tried
to melt back into the darkness.

30

“Oh no you don't, Peter Black-
bum!” Miss Wellman snapped at
him, as if he were four years old.
"You come right back here and
untie this poor goonie. Shame on
> ou. You, too, Carl Hest. The very
idea!”

One by one she called them by
name, whipped them with phrases
used on small children— but nev^er
on grown men.

She was a professional, she
knew what she was doing. And
she had been right in what she
had told me— if Td butted in, there
might have been incalculable
damage done.

Force would not have stopped
them. It would have egged them
on, increased the passiwi. They
would have gloried in resisting it.
It would have given meaning to a
meaningless thing. The resistance
would have been a part, a needed
part, and given them the triumph
of rape instead of the frustration
of encountering motionless, indif-
ferent acceptance.

But she had shocked them out
of it, by not recognizing their
groum maleness, their lustful dan-
gerousness. She saw them as no
more than naughty children— and
they became that, in their owm
eyes.

I watched them in a kind of
daze, while, in their own daze,
tliey untied tlie goonie, lifted him
carefully as if to be sure tliey did-
n’t hurt him. The goonie looked at
tliem from his great glowing green

FANT/\SY AND SCIENCE FICTION

eyes without fear, without won-
der. He seemed only to say that
whatever man needed of him,
man could have.

With complete casualness, Miss
Wellman stepped forward and
took the goonie s hand. She led it
to her owTi rickashaw at the edge
of the grove. She spoke to her
team, and without a backward
look she drove aw ay.

Even in this she had shown her
complete mastery of technique.
With no show of hurry, she had
driven away before they had time
to remember they were deter-
mined, angry men.

They stared after her into the
darkness. Then meekly, tamely,
without looking at one another,
gradually even as if repelled by
the presence of one another, they
moved out of tlie grove tow^ard
their own rickashaw^s on the other
side of the grove near the path.

The party was over.

For those who find violent ac-
tion a sufficient end in itself, the
yam is over. The goonie was res-
cued and would be returned to
me. The emotional Tyqfiioid
Marys had been isolated and
would be shipped back to Earth
where tlie disease was endemic
and would not be noticed. Paul
Tyler would be acceptable again
in the company of men. Miriam
Wellman would soon be on her
way to her next assignment of
trouble-sliooting, a different sitiia-

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

tion calling for techniques which
would be different but equally ef-
fective. The Company was saved
some trouble that could have be-
come unprofitable. Libo would re-
turn to sanity and reason, the ten-
derfeet would gradually become
Liboans, insured against the
spread of disease by their innocu-
lation. . . . The mob unrest and
disorders were finished.

But the yarn was not over for
me. What purpose to action if, be-
yond giving some release to the
manic depressive, it has no mean-
ing? In the middle of it all, the an-
swer to the goonie puzzle had hit
me. But the answer solved noth-
ing; it served only to raise much
larger questions.

At home that night I slept badly,
so fitfully that Ruth grew worrit
and asked if there was anything
she could do.

‘The goonie,” I blurted out as I
lay and stared into the darkness.
‘That first hunting party. If the
goonie had run away, they would
have given those hunters, man,
the chase he needed for sport.
After a satisfactory chase, man
would have caught and killed the
goonie down to the last one. If it
had hid, it would have furnished
another kind of chase, the chal-
lenge of finding it, until one by one
all would have been found out,
and killed. If it had fought, it
would have given man his thrill of
battle, and the end would have
been the goonie s death.”

31

Ruth lay there beside me, say-
ing nothing, but I knew she was
not asleep.

T Ve always drought the goonie
had no sense of survival,” I said.
“But it took the only possible
means of surviving. Only by the
most complete compliance with
mans wishes could it siu^dve.
Only by giving no resistance in
any form. How did it know, Ruth?
How did it know? First contact,
no experience with man. Yet it
knew. Not just some old wise ones
knew, but all knew instantly,
down to the tinest cub. What kind
of intelligence—?”

“Try to sleep, dear,” Ruth said
tenderly. ‘Try to sleep now. We'll
talk about it tomorrow. You need
your rest. . . .”

We did not talk about it the
next day. The bigger questions it
opened up for me had begun to
take form. I couldn’t talk about
them. I went about my work in a
daze, and in the later afternoon,
compelled, drawn irresistibly, I
asked the goonie team to take me
again to Carson’s Hill. I knew that
there I would be alone.

The glade was empty, the
grasses were already lifting them-
selves upright again. The fire had
left a patch of ashes and black-
ened rock. It would be a long time
before that scar was gone, but it
would go eventually. The after-
noon suns sent shafts of light down
through the trees, and I found the
spot that had been my favorite

32

twenty years ago when I had
looked out over a valley and re-
solved somehow to own it.

I sat down and looked out over
my \'alley and should have felt a
sense of adiievement, of satisfac-
tion that I had managed to do
well But my valley was like the
ashes of the burned-out fire. For
what had I really achieved?

Survival? ^\llat had I proved,
except that I could do it? In going
out to the stais, in conquering the
universe, what was man proving,
except that he could do it? What
was he proving tliat the primitive
tribesman on Eartli hadn r already
proved when he conquered the
jungle enough to eat without be-
ing eaten?

Was survival the end, and all?
What about all these noble aspira-
tions of man? How quickly he dis-
carded tliem when his survival
was threatened. What were they
tlien but luxuries of a self-adula-
tion which he practiced only
when he could safely afiFord it?

How was man superior to the
goonie? Because he conquered it?
Had he conquered it? Through
my ranching, there were many
more goonies on Libo now than
when man had first arrived. The
goonie did our work, we slaught-
ered it for our meat. But it multi-
plied and tlirove.

Tlie satisfactions of pushing oth-
er life forms around? We could do
it. But vv’^asn’t it a pretty childish
sort of satisfaction? Nobody knew

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

where the goonie came from, there
was no evolutionary chain to ac-
count for him here on Libo; and
the pal tree on wdiich he depend-
ed was unlike any odier kind of
tree on Libo. Those were impor-
tant reasons for tliinldng I was
right. Had the goonie once con-
quered the universe, too? Had it,
too, found it good to push otlier
life forms around? Had it grown
up with tlie universe, out of its
childish satisfactions, and run up
against the basic question: Is there
really anything beyond survival,
itself, and if so, what? Had it
found an answer, an answer so
magnificent that it simply didn’t
matter that man worked it,
slaughtered it, as long as he multi-
plied it?

And would man, someday, too,
submit willingly to a new, arro-
gant, brash young life-form— in tlie
knowledge that it really didn’t
matter? But what was the end re-
sult of knowing nothing mattered
except static survival?

To hell with tlie problems of
man, let him solve tliem. What
about yourself, MaePherson?
What aro you trying to avoid?
What won’t you face?

To the rest of man the goonie is
an unintelligent animal, fit only
for labor and food. But not to me.
If I am right, the rest of man is
wrong— and I must believe I am
right. I hiow.

And tomorrow is slauglitering
day.

WHAT NOW, LITTLE MAN?

I can forgive the psychologist
his estimation of the goonie. He s
trapped in his own rigged slot
machine. I can forgive the Insti-
tute, for it is, must be, dedicated to
the survival, the superiority, of
man. I can forgive the Company
—it must show a profit to its stock-
holders or go out of business. All
survival, all survival. I can forgive
man, because there's nothing
wrong with wanting to survive, to
prove that you can do it.

And it would be a long time be-
fore man had solved enough of his
whole survival problem to look
beyond it.

But I had looked beyond it.
Had the goonie, the alien goonie,
looked beyond it? And seen what?
What had it seen that made any-
thing we did to it not matter?

We could, in clear conscience,
continue to use it for food only so
long as we judged it by man's own
definitions, and thereby found it
unintelligent. But I knew now that
there was something beyond
man's definition.

All right. I've made my little
pile. I can retire, go away. Would
that solve anything? Someone
else would simply take my place.
Would I become anything more
than the dainty young thing who
lifts a bloody dripping bite of
steak to her lips, but shudders at
the thought of killing anything?
Suppose I started all over, on some
other planet, forgot the goonie,
wiped it out of my mind, as hu-

33

mans do when they find reality
unpleasant. Would that solve any-
thing? If there are definitions of
intelhgence beyond man's own,
would I not merely be starting aU
over with new scenes, new crea-
tures, to reach the same end?

Suppose I deadened my thought
to reality, as man is wont to do?
Could that be done? Could the
question once asked, and never
answered, be forgotten? Surely
other men have asked tlie ques-
tion: What is the purpose of sur-
vival if there is no purpose be-
yond survival?

Have any of the philosophies
ever answered it? Yes, we've spec-
ulated on the survival of the ego
after the flesh, that ego so over-
poweringly precious to us that we
cannot contemplate Its end— but
survival of ego to what purpose?

Was this the fence across our
path? The fence so alien that we
tore ourselves to pieces trying to
get over it, go through it?

Had the goonies found a way
around it, an answer so alien to our
kind of mind that what we did to
them, how we used them, didn't
matter— so long as we did not de-
stroy them all? I had said they did
not initiate, did not create, had no
conscience— not by mans stand-
ards. But by their own? How could
I know? How could I know?

Go out to the stars, young man,
and grow up with the universe!

All riglit! We're out there!

What now, little man?

You cant see air, or taste it, or hold it between thumb and
forefinger— but looked at through the eyes of the good doctor,
it is substantial, complicated, and fascinating.

THIN AIR

by Isaac Asimov

Laiuh's atmosphere is now
going through a period of scien-
tific inijx)rtance and prominence.
To put it as colorfully (and yet as
honestly) as possible, it is all the
scientific rage.

Once before in scientific his-
tory, Earth’s atmosphere passed
through a period of glamor. Let
me tell you about that (or perhaps
I should say, try and stop me)
before I get to tlie current period.

To begin with, in ancient
Greek times, air had all the dig-
nity of an ^‘clement’' — one of the
abstract substances out of which
the universe was composed. Ac-
cording to Aristotle, the universe,
to begin witli, was composed of
“earth,"’ “water,” “air,” and “fire,”
in four concentric shells with

“earth” innermost and “fire” outer-
most.

In modern terms, “earth"' is
equivalent to the litliosphere, tlie
solid body of tlie planet, itself.
“Water"" is the hydrosphere, or
ocean; and “air” is the atmo-
sphere. “Fire” is less obvious, it
being so high up as to be ordinar-
ily imperceptible to human senses.
However, storms roiled the sphere
of “fire” and made fragments of it
visible to us as lightning.

Even the sphere of “fire’"
reached only to the Moon. From
the Moon outward, there was a
fifth and heavenly “clement,” like
none of those on our imperfect
earth. Aristotle called it “ether."’
Medieval scholars called it “fifth
element”, but did so in Latin, so
that the word came out “quintes-

34

THIN AIR

35

sence.’' That word survives today,
meaning the purest and most es-
sential part of anything.

Such a theor}' about the struc-
ture of the universe presented ear-
ly thinkers with few problems
about the air. For instance, did
the atmosphere ever come to an
end as one went upward? Sure it
did. It came to an end at the
point where tlie sphere of fire be-
gan.

You sec, there was always some-
thing in the Aristotelian view.
Just as earth gave way to water and
water to air, with no gap be-
tween, so air gave way to fire and
fire to ether. There was never
nothing. As Aristotle said, “Na-
ture abhors a vacuum.”

Did the atmosphere have
weight? Obviously not. You didn't
feel any weight, did you? If a
rock fell on you or a bucket's
worth of water, you would feel
the weight. But there's no feeling
of weight to the air. Aristotle had
an explanation for this. “Earth”
and “water” had a natural tend-
ency to move downward, as far as
they could, toward the center of
the universe (i.e. the center of the
Eartli).

“Air,” on the otlier hand, had a
natural tendency to move upward
as anyone could plainly sec,
(Blow bubbles under water and
watch them move upwards — not
that Aristotle would appeal to ex-
periment, believing as he did that
the light of reason was sufficient

to penetrate the secrets of nature.)
Since air lifted upward, it had no
weight downward.

Aristotle flourished about 330
B.C. and his views were Gospel
for a long time.

Curtain falls. Two thousand
years pass. Curtain rises.

Toward the end of his long and
brilliant life, Galileo Galilei, the
Italian scientst, grew interested
in the fact that an ordinary^ water-
pump drawing water out of a well
would not lift the water any higher
than about 33 feet above tlie natu-
ral level. This, no matter how
vigorously and how pertinaciously
the handle of tlie pump was oper-
ated.

Now people tliought they knew
how a pump worked. It was so de-
signed that a tightly-fitted piston
moved upward witliin a cylinder,
creating a vacuum. Since Nature
abhorred a vacuum (after all,
Aristotle said so) water rushed up-
ward to fill said vacuum and was
trapped by a one-way valve. The
process was repeated and repeat-
ed, more and more water rushed
upward until it poured out the
spout. Theoretically, this should
go on forever, the water rising
higher and higher as long as you
worked the pump.

Then why didn't the water rise
more than 33 feet above its natu-
ral level? Galileo shook his head,
and never did find an answer. He

36

muttered gruffly that apparently
Nature abhorred a vacuum only
up to 33 feet and recommended
that his pupil, Evangelista Torri-
celli, look into the matter.

In 1643, the year after Gali-
leo’s death, Torricelli did that. It
occurred to him that what lifted
the water wasn’t a fit of emotion
on the part of Dame Nature, but
the very unemotional weight of air
pressing down on the water and
forcing it upward into a vacuum
(which would ordinarily be filled
with a balancing weight of air).
Water could not be forced higher
than 33 feet because a column of
water 33 feet high pressed down
as hard as did the entire atmos-
phere, so that there was balance.
Even if a complete vacuum were
pulled over the water, so that air
down at well-water level pushed
the column upward without any
back air-pressure, the weight of
the water itself was enough to
balance the total air-pressure.

How to test this? If you could
start with a column of water, say,
40 feet long, it should sink until
the 33-feet level was reached. A
40-foot column of water would
have more pressure at the bottom
than the entire atmosphere. But
how handle forty feet of water?

Well, then, suppose you used a
liquid denser than water. In that
case, a shorter column would suf-
fice to balance air’s pressure. The
•densest liquid Tomcelli knew
was mercury, which is about 13V4

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

times as dense as water. Since 33
divided by 13 Vi is about 2 Vi
feet, a column of 30 inches of mer-
cury should balance the air pres-
sure.

Torricelli filled a tube (closed
at one end and a yard long) with
mercury, put his thumb over the
open end and tipped it into an
open container of mercury. If the
air had no weight, it would not
press on the exposed mercury level
in the container. All the mercury
in the tube would therefore pour
out.

The mercury in the tube started
pouring out, to be sure, but only to
the extent of a few inches. Fully
30 inches of mercury remained
standing, supported by nothing,
apparently. It was either magic or
else Aristotle was wrong and air
had weight. There was no real
choice — air must have weight.
Thus, the first glamorous period
of the atmosphere had begun.

Torricefii had invented the ba-
rometer, an instrument still used
today to measure air-pressure as
“so many inches of mercury.” Fur-
thermore, in the upper part of the
tube, in the few inches that had
been vacated by the mercury, there
was a vacuum, filled with nothing
but some mercury vapor and
darned little of that. It is called a
‘Toricellian vacuum” to this day
and was the first decent vacuum
ever formed. It showed definitely
that Nature didn’t care, one way
or the other, for vacuums.

THIN AIR

37

In 1650, Otto von Guericke,
who happened to be mayor of the
German city of Magdeburg, went
a step further. He invented an air-
pump which could pump air out
of an enclosure, forming a harder
and harder vacuum; f.e., one that
grew more and more vacuous.

Von Guericke then demon-
strated the power of air pressure in
a dramatic way. He had two met-
al hemispheres made which ended
in flat rims that could be greased
and stuck together. If this were
done, the heav 7 hemispheres fell
apart of themselves. There was
nothing to hold them together.

But one of the hemispheres had
a valved nozzle to which an air
pump could be affixed. Von Gue-
ricke put the hemispheres together
and pumped the air out of them,
then closed the valve. Now the
weight of tlie atmosphere was
pressing the hemispheres together
and there was no equivalent pres-
sure witliin.

How strong was this air pres-
sure? Well, publicity-wise von
Guericke attached a team of horses
to one hemisphere by a handle he
had tlioughtfully provided upon it
and anotlier team to the other
hemisphere. With half the town of
Magdeburg watching open-
moutlied, he had the horses strain
uselessly in opposite directions to
part the hemispheres.

The tliin air about us which
‘‘obviously"' weighed nothing, did
indeed weigh plenty. And when

that weight was put to use, two
teams of horses couldn't counter
it

Von Guericke released the
horses, opened the valve, and tlic
hemispheres fell open by them-
selves. It was as dramatic an ex-
periment as Galileo's supposed
tossing of two balls of different
mass off the Tower of Pisa, and
what's more, von Guericke's expe-
riment really happened. (They
don't make mayors like that any-
more.)

Since the atmosphere has
weight, tliere could be only so
much of it and no more. There
could be only enough of it to al-
low a column of air (from sea-
level to the very tip-top), with a
cross-sectional area of one square
inch, to weigh 14.7 pounds. If the
atmosphere were as dense all the
way up, as it is at sea-level, a col-
umn just five miles high would
have die necessar>^ weight.

But of course, air isn't equally
dense all the way up.

In die 1650's a Bridsh scientist,
Robert Boyle, having read of von
Guericke's experiments set about to
study the properties of air more
thoroughly. He found it to be
compressible.

That is, if he trapped a sample
of air in the short closed half of a
U-tube by pouring mercury into
the long, open half, die trapped
air contracted in volume (f.e.,
was compressed) until it had built

38

up an internal pressure that bal-
anced the head of mercury. As the
mercury was added, the momen-
tum of its fall added a bit of pres-
sure to that of its weight alone and
the column of mercury jiggled up
and down as the trapped air com-
pressed and expanded like a
spring. The English scientist,
Robert Hooke, had just been re-
porting on the behavior of actual
springs and since the trapped air
behaved analogously, Boyle called
it *‘the spring of the air.'*

If, now, Boyle poured addi-
tional mercury into the U-tube,
the trapped air decreased further
in volume until the internal pres-
sure had increased to the point
where the additional weight of
mercury could be supported. Fur-
thermore, Boyle made actual meas-
urements and found that if the
pressure on the trapped air were
doubled, its volume was halved; if
the pressure were tripled, the vol-
ume was reduced to one-third
. . . and so on. (This is one way
of stating what is now called
"Boyle's Law.")

This was a remarkable discov-
ery, for liquids and solids did not
behave in this w^ay. Boyle's work
marks the beginning of the scien-
tific study of the properties of
gases which, in a hundred years,
produced the atomic theory and
revolutionized chemistry.

Since air is compressible, the
lowest regions of the atmosphere
which bear all the weight of all the

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

air above, must be most com-
pressed; and as one moves upward
in the atmosphere, each successive
sample of air at greater and greater
heights has less atmosphere above
it, is subjected to a smaller weight
of air, and is therefore less com-
pressed.

It follows that a given number
of molecules occupy more space
ten miles up than they do at sea-
level, and more space still twenty
miles up, and more space still thir-
ty miles up, and so on, indefinite-
ly. From this, it would seem that
the atmosphere must also stretch
up indefinitely. True, there's less
and less of it as you go up, but that
less and less is taking up more and
more room.

In fact, it can be calculated tliat,
if the atmosphere were at the sea-
level average of temperature
throughout its height, air pressure
would be reduced tenfold for ev-
ery twelve miles we travel upward.
In other words, since the air pres-
sure is 30 inches of mercury at
sea-level, it would be 3 inches of
mercury at a height of 12 miles,
0.3 inches of mercury at 24 miles,
0.03 inches of mercury at 36
miles and so on. Even at a height
of 108 miles, there would still be,
by this accounting, 0.000000003
inches of mercury of pressure.
This doesn't sound like much, but
it means that six million tons of air
would be included in the portion
of the atmosphere higher than 1 00
miles above the earth's surface.

THIN AIR

39

Of course, the atmosphere is
not the same temperature through-
out. It is common knowledge that
mountain slopes are always cooler
than the valley below. There is
also no denying the fact that high
mountains are perpetually snow-
covered at the top, even through
the summer and even in the
tropics.

Presumably, then, the tempera-
ture of the atmosphere lowered
with height and, it seemed likely,
did so in a smooth fall all the way
up. This spoiled the simple theory
about the rate of decline of density
with height, but it didn’t affect the
theory that the atmosphere went
remarkably high. Once astronom-
ers started looking, they found
ample evidence of that.

For instance, visible meteor
trails have been placed (by tri-
angulation) as high as 100 miles.
That means that even at 100
miles, then, there is enough at-
mosphere to friction tiny bits of
fast-moving metals to incandes-
cence.

Furthermore, aurora borealis
(caused by the glowing of thin
wisps of gas as the result of bom-
bardment by particles from outer
space) have been detected as high
as 600 miles.

However, how was one to get de-
tails on the upper atmosphere?
Particularly one would want to
know the exact way in which tem-
perature and pressure fell off with
height. As early as 1648, the

French scientist, Blaise Pascal,
had sent a friend up a mountain
side with a barometer to check the
fall of air-pressure, but then, how
high are the mountains?

The highest mountains easily
accessible to the Europeans of the
17th century were the Alps, the
tallest peaks of which extended 3
miles into the air. Even the high-
est mountains of all, the Hima-
layas, were only double that. And
then, how could you be sure that
the air 6 miles high in the Hima-
layas was the same as the air 6
miles high over the blank and level
ocean.

No, anydiing in the atmos-
phere higher than, say, a mile was
attainable only in restiicted por-
tions of the globe and then with
great difficulty. And anything
higher than 5 or 6 miles just wasn’t
attainable, period. No one would
ever know. No one.

So the first glamorous period of
the atmosphere then came to an
end.

Curtain falls. A century and a
half passes. Curtain rises.

In 1782, two French brothers
Joseph Michel Montgolfier and
Jacques Etienne Montgolfier, lit a
fire under a large light bag with an
opening underneath and allowed
the heated air and smoke to fill it.
The hot air, being lighter than the
cold air, moved upward, just as an
air bubble would move upward in
water. The movement carried the

40

bag with it, and the first balloon
had been constructed.

Within a matter of months,
hydrogen replaced hot air, gon-
dolas were added, and first ani-
mals and then men went aloft. In
the next few decades, aeronautics
was an established craze — a full
century before the Wright Broth-
ers.

Within a year of the first bal-
loon, an American named John
Jeffries went up in one, taking
with him a barometer and other in-
struments, plus provisions to col-
lect air at various heights. The at-
mosphere, miles high, was thus
suddenly and spectacularly made
available to science, and the sec-
ond glamorous period had begun.

By 1804, the French scientist
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac had gone
up nearly 4 V 2 miles in a balloon,
a height considerably greater than
that of the highest peak of the
Alps, and brought down air col-
lected there.

It was, however, difficult to go
much higher than that, because
aeronauts even then suffered from
the inconvenient necessity of
breathing. In 1874, three men
went up 6 miles — the height of
Mt. Everest — but only one sur-
vived. In 1892, the practice of
sending up instrumented, un-
manned balloons was inaugurated.

The most important purpose of
the early experiments was the
measurement of the temperature
at high altitudes, and by the

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

1890's some startling results
showed up. The temperature did
indeed drop steadily as one went
upward, until at a height some-
what greater than that of Mt.
Everest, the temperature of — 70°
F. was reached. Then, for some
miles higher, there were no further
temperature changes.

The French meteorologist, Leon
P. Teisserenc de Bort, one of tlie
discoverers of tliis fact, therefore
divided the atmosphere into two
layers. The lower layer, where
there was temperature change, was
characterized by rising and falling
air currents that kept that region
of the atmosphere churned up and
produced clouds and all the chang-
ing weather phenomena with
which we are familiar. This is the
troposphere C'tlie sphere of
change”).

The height at which the tem-
perature fall ceased was the tropo-
pause (“end of change”) and
above it was the region of constant
temperature, a place of no currents
of churning, where the air lay
quietly and (Teisserenc de Bort
thought) in layers, with the light-
er gases floating on top. Perhaps
the earth’s atmospheric supplies of
helium and hydrogen were to be
found up there, floating on the
denser gases below. He called this
upper layer the stratosphere
(‘‘sphere of layers”).

The tropopause is about ten
miles above sea-level at the equa-
tor and only five miles above at the

THIN AIR

41

poles. The stratosphere extends
from the tropopause up to about
sixteen miles. There, where the
temperature starts changing again,
is the stratopaiise.

About 7 5 % of the total air
mass of the earth exists within the
troposphere and another 13% is
in the stratosphere. Together, tro-
posphere and stratosphere, with
98% of the total air mass between
them, make up the “lower atmos-
phere."' But it is the 2% above the
stratosphere, the “upper atmos-
phere", which gained particular
prominence as the twentieth cen-
tury wore on.

In the 1930’s, ballooning en-
tered a new era. Balloons of poly-
ethylene plastic were llgjiter,
stronger, less permeable to gas
than the old silken balloons
(cheaper, too). They could reach
heights of more than twenty miles.
Sealed gondolas were used and the
balloonists carried their own air
supply with them.

In this way, manned balloons
reached the sti*atosphere and be-
yond. Russian balloonists brought
back samples of stratospheric air
and no helium or hydrogen was
present; just the usual oxygen
and nitrogen. (Wc now know
that the atmosphere is largely oxy-
gen and nitrogen all the way up.)

Airplanes with sealed cabins
were flying the stratosphere, too,
and toward the end of World War
II, the jet streams were discovered.

These were two strong air currents
girdling the earth, and moving
from east to west at 100 to 500
miles per hour at about tropopause
heights, one in the North Tem-
perate Zone and one in the South
Temperate. Apparently, they arc
of particular importance in weath-
er forecasting, for they wriggle
about quite a bit and the weather
pattern follows their WTiggling.

After World War II, rockets
began going up and sending down
data. The region above the strato-
sphere w^as more and more thor-
oughly explored. Thus, it was
found that from the stratopause to
a height of about 35 miles, the
temixjrature rises, reaching a high
of —55° F. before dropping once
more to — 100° F. at a height of
about 50 miles. Above tliat there is
a large and steady rise to tem-
peratures that are estimated to be
about 2200° F. at a height of 300
miles and are probably higher still
at greater heights.

The region of rising, tlien fall-
ing, temperature, from 16 to 50
miles is now called the mesosphere
(“the middle sphere") and the re-
gion of minimum temperature that
tops it is the mesopause. The
mesosphere contains virtually all
the mass of the upper atmosphere,
about 2% of all the atmosphere.
Above the mesopause, only a few
thousandths of a percent of the
atmosphere remain.

These last wisps are, however,
anything but insignificant, and

42

they are divided into two regions.
From 50 to 100 miles is the region
where meteor trails are visible.
This is the thermosphere (’’sphere
of heat” because of the rising tem-
peratures) and is topped by the
thermopause, though that is not
the “end of heat.” Some authorities
run the thermosphere up to 200 or
even 300 miles.

Above the thermopause is the
region of the atmosphere which is
too thin to heat meteors to in-
candescence but which can still
support the aurora borealis. This is
the exosphere (“outside sphere”).

There is no clear upper bound-
ary of the exosphere. Actually, the
exosphere just thins and fades into
interplanetary space (which is
not, of course, a complete vac-
uum). Some try to judge the “end
of the atmosphere” by the manner
in which the molecules of the air
hit one another.

Here at sea-level, molecules are
crowded so closely together that
any one molecule will only be able
to travel a few millionths of an
inch (on the average) before strik-
ing another. The air acts as a con-
tinuous medium, for that reafson.

At a height of ten miles, the
molecules have so thinned out
that they may travel a ten-thou-
sandth of an inch before colliding.
At a height of 70 miles, they will
travel a yard and a half, and at
150 miles, 370 yards before collid-
ing. At a height of several hun-
dred miles, collisions become so

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

rare that you can ignore them, and
the atmosphere begins to behave
like a collection of independent
particles.

(If you have ever been part of
the New Year’s Eve crowd in
Times Square, and have also
walked a lonely city street at 3
A.M., you have an intuitive no-
tion of the difference between
particles composing an apparent-
ly continuous medium and par-
ticles in isolation.)

The point where the atmos-
phere stops behaving as a continu-
ous medium and begins to act as a
collection of independent parti-
cles may be considered the exo-
pause, the end of the atmosphere.
This has been placed at heights
varying from 600 to 1,000 miles
by different authorities.

The praetical importance to us
of the upper atmosphere is that it
bears the brunt of the various bom-
bardments from outer space, blunt-
ing them and shielding us.

For one thing, there is the Sun’s
heat. The Sun emits photons with
the energy one would expect of a
body with a surface temperature of
10,000° F. These photons do not
lose energy as they travel through
space and they strike the atmos-
phere in full force. Fortunately,
the sun radiates them in all direc-
tions and only a billionth or so are
intercepted by our own planet.

Still, when one of the photons
strikes a molecule at the edge of

THIN AIR

43

the atmosphere and is absorbed,
that molecule may find itself pos-
sessed of a Sun-type temperature
of 10,000 F. Only a small pro-
portion of the molecules of Earth's
atmosphere are so heated, and
slowly, by collision with other
molecules below, the energy is
shared so that the temperature
drops to bearable levels as one
descends.

(The high temperatures of the
exosphere and thermosphere are
an odd echo of the Aristotelian
sphere of “fire.'’ You may also be
wondering how rockets can pass
through the exosphere, if it has a
temperature in the thousands of
degrees, without being destroyed.
There you run up against the dif-
ference between temperature and
heat and Tm reserving that for an-
other article.)

Of course, the high temperature
of the outermost atmosphere has
its effects on the molecules that
compose it. Oxygen and nitrogen
molecules, shaken by this tem-
perature and exposed to the bom-
bardment of high energy particles
beside, break up into individual
atoms. (If the free atoms sink
down to positions where less en-
ergy is available, they recombine,
so no permanent damage is done.)

People have speculated whether
ramjets might not make use of
these free atoms to navigate the
exosphere. If enough could be
gathered and compressed (and
that is the hard part), the energy

delivered per weight by their re-
union to form molecules would be
much higher than the energy de-
livered per weight by the com-
bination of conventional fuel
with oxygen, ozone or fluorine.

Furthermore, the supply would
be inexhaustible, since the atoms,
once combined into molecules,
would be expelled out the rear
where the suns energy would
promptly split them into atoms
again. In effect, such a ramjet
would be running on something
one tiny step removed from solar
energy.

The bombardment of particles
from space also succeeds in dam-
aging individual atoms or mole-
cules, knocking off one or more
planetary electrons, and leaving
behind charged atom-fragments
called ims. Enough ions are
formed in the exosphere to pro-
duce the glow called the aurorae.

In the denser air of the thermo-
sphere, there are more or less per-
manent layers of ions at different
heights. T^ese first made them-
selves known by the fact that they
reflect certain radio waves. In
1902, Oliver Heaviside of Eng-
land and Arthur Edwin Kennelly
of the United States discovered
(independently) the lowest of
these layers, about 70 miles high.
It is called the Kennelly-Heavi-
side Layer in their honor.

Higher layers (at about 120
miles and 200 miles) were dis-
covered in 1927 by the British

44

physicist, Edward Victor Apple-
ton, and these are called the Ap-
yleton layers. Because of these vari-
ous layers of ions, the thermo-
sphere is frequently called the
ionosphere, and its upper bound-
ary die ionopaiise (though that is
not the ‘‘end of ions’* anymore
than it is the 'end of heat”).

Nowadays, the layers have re-
ceived objective letters. The Ken-
nclly-Heaviside layer is the E layer,
while the Appleton layers are the
Fi layer and F, layer. Between the
Fi layer and the E layer is the E
region and below the E layer is the
D region.

Lower in die atmosphere, down
in die mesosphere, the ultra-violet
of die Sun is still capable of induc-
ing chemical reactions that do not
ordinarily proceed spontaneously
at sea-level. It is possible to send
chemicals up there and watch
things happen. The most impor-
tant point, though, is that some-
diing happens to a chemical al-
ready present diere. Ordinary oxy-
gen molecules of the mesosphere
(made up of two oxygen atoms
apiece) are converted into the
more energetic ozone molecules
(made up of three oxygen atoms
apiece).

The ozone is continually chang-
ing back to oxygen while the for-

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

ever incoming ultraviolet is con-
tinually forming more ozone. An
equilibrium is reached and a per-
manent layer of ozone exists about
1 5 miles above the earth’s surface.
This is fortunate for us, since the
maintenance of the ozone layer
continually absorbs the sun’s hard
ultra-violet which, if it were al-
lowed to reach the earth’s surface
unabsorbed, would be fatal for
most forms of land life in short
order.

Because of die chemical reac-
tions occurring in the mesosphere,
it is sometimes called the chemo-
sphere (and its upper boundary,
the cheinopause.^ As for the ozone
layer itself that is sometimes re-
ferred to as the ozmiosphere.

So there you have the steps.
From Aristotle’s undifferentiated
"air” dirough one period of scien-
tific glamor to Boyle’s smoothly
thinning atmosphere; then through
another period of scientific glamor
to the modern layers upon layers
of air, with changing properties.

Next step (now begun): the
investigation of cis^Ltinar space
(the space “this side of the Moon”)
which has already yielded the sur-
prising knowledge of die existence
of the Van Allen radiation belts —
but diat’s for another time.

Gerard Neyroud, a retired English newspaperman, here
sketches a sardonic picture of EartKs ' behavior upon en-
countering evidence that there is life on Venus. (Later in
this issue, Robert Nathan offers an altogether different ap-
proach to the subject . )

The Terra-Venusian War of 1979

by Gerard E. Neyroud

There are still a few stiff-
minded people who refuse to ad-
mit that Venus attacked the earth
in 1979. People, mark you, who
lived through the war, heard the
nuclear blasts shattering the order
of space, saw the golden legions
of Venus advancing relentlessly
through the void, witnessed the
prodigious aftermath of the inva-
sion. Nothing but imagination, the
non-believers say; a world-wide
hallucination instilled into the
minds of men by the frenzied
shoutings of press, television and
radio. The skeptics cannot very
well deny the extraordinary ef-
fects of the Venusian incursion—
those effects still linger today,
though fast fading— so they glibly
ascribe tliem to earthborn causes.

I am not an imaginative person;
I am a retired businessman known
to my family and friends as a con-
firmed cynic, and I say that the
skeptics are egregiously wrong.
Furthermore I deny that the press

and the aimews people over-
played the momentous happen-
ings of the spring of 1979. Tliere
was no need for synthetic sensa-
tionalism; the genuine article was
wild enough. I should know; I was
in on the Terra-Venusian affair
from its very beginning.

Perhaps I should not have used
the words “attack” and “war,” but
tliere are no other terms in any
earth language to describe the
happenings. “Extraterrestrial In-
tervention” would be nearer tlie
mark, but it is a clumsy phrase
and meaningless without the facts.

Here, then, are the facts:

The first inkling of the coming
storm was a little story in the
Washington Starpost of April 1,
1979. My clipping file (I collect
clippings) is on my desk and I
can quote the story in full;

Venus Signals
Baffle D.C. Astronomer

46

The appearance of a large num-
ber of golden globes in the vi-
cinity of the cloud-veiled planet
Venus was reported here today
by Carl Maxner, noted Wash-
ington astronomer. The globes,
presumably of gaseous origin,
appear to be emanating from
the surface of the mystery plan-
net at regularly spaced inter-
vals, Maxner said.

Using an “astrophotonic scan-
ner” of his own design and con-
stioiction, the astronomer claims
to have penetrated for the first
time the dense atmospheric lay-
er that hitlierto has shrouded the
actual surface of Venus from
human observation. Maxner of-
fers no explanation of the phe-
nomenon, but thinks that the
regularity with which the globes
appear and their orderly dis-
persal could indicate the pres-
ence on our sister planet of a
high order of intelligence. The
globes will be no threat to the
cartli, Maxner said. Venus, at its
closest approach, is twenty-
tliree million miles away, he
pointed out, and no gas bubble,
however huge, could traverse
even a minute fraction of that
distance without breaking up.

The inevitable refutation came
the following day in an Associated
Press despatch from the Palomar
Observ^atory high in the Califor-
nian Sierras. It was headed Scien-
tist Scoffs at Venus Globes, and

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

quoted Professor Amos Higgin-
botham, astrophysicist at the Ob-
servatory, as declaring:

The Washington report that
large golden globes were issu-
ing from the planet Venus is
completely nonsensical. Our
giant telescope, incidentally the
largest in the world, has failed
to disclose anything that would
even remotely confirm the
claims of this self-styled astron-
omer. The story is unworthy of
serious consideration.

On the same day tlie New York
Daily Mirage, true to type, in-
vested tlie story with a sex angle:

Says Venus Blowing Bubbles

Venus, shy damsel of the eve-
ning sky, is shrouding her lovely
form with golden bubbles to
ward off the naked eye of a
Washington D. C. peeping tom.
The naughty man who says he
saw the lady in the bubble bath
is Charles Mickser, amateur
stargazer and lover of nature in
the raw. Mackser told our in-
quiring reporter today that the
bubbles are bright gold and
. very large, wliich is fortunate
for Venus, who Is quite a big
girl herself. Muckser abruptly
terminated the interview when
it was suggested that the star in
liis eye might reside on the top
floor of the Shoreham Hotel.

THE TERRA-VENUSIAN WAR OF 1979

47

The Maxner report was given
its coup-de-grace on April 4 by
the New York Tribune-Times in
this downcolumn story on page 7:

Venus Globes Schoolboy Hoax

The report that a Washington
astronomer, Carl Maxner, had
observed "golden globes” issu-
ing from the surface of the plan-
et Venus was an April Fool hoax
perpetrated by a schoolboy, it
was revealed last night. The
Washington Bureau of the Trib-
une-Times has ascertained that
Maxner, described by another
newspaper as a "noted astrono-
mer,” is a fifteen year old pupil
at Washingtons Northwestern
High School

Jonas Higbee, Assistant Prin-
cipal of Northwestern High,
told a Tribune-Times repre-
sentative that Maxner had
shown some slight interest in
astronomy and had been per-
mitted to construct his "astro-
photonic scanner” in the school
workshop. "It was stiictly a
Rube Goldberg job,” Higbee
said, "made out of bits and
pieces, and I doubt if it could
pick up the full moon on a
clear night. Washington Higli
frowns on hoaxes of this kind
and we have been considering
disciplinary action. However
we understand the boys father
has already taken him in hand.”

At the Maxner Home on Kalo-

rama Road, Mrs. Bruno Max-
ner, the boy's mother, refused
to permit her son to be inter-
viewed. "I have sent Carl to
bed,” she told our reporter.
"His father was much too rough
with him.” Replying to a further
question, Mrs. Maxner said that
the astrophotonic scanner had
been broken.

Three days later, on April 7,
the austere and unimpeachable
Manchester Guardian resurrected
the golden globe story in a new
version that jolted the world. The
Guardians thunderclap was car-
ried under a three-decker head on
page 5 and my files, fortunately,
enable me to quote it in full.

Strange Manifestations
ON Planet Venus;
British Astronomers Puzzled
Is Earth Menaced?

Perplexed astrophysicists at the
Jodrell Bank Observatory near
Manchester confessed today
that they were nonplussed by
the appearance of a cluster of
spheroids of immense size on the
surface of the planet Venus. Tlie
spheroids, said to be pale gold
in colour, were first picked up
by the Observatory's astropho-
tonic scanner (incidentally, the
first of its kind in the world) a
fortnight ago, and have since
been kept under close and con-
stant observation.

48

At a hastily convoked press
conference. Sir Hilary Biggles-
wade, K.C.B.E., F.R.A.S., Presi-
dent of the Royal Outer Space
Society, told the assembled re-
porters that the mysterious
spheroids are beginning to form
—or, disturbing thought, are be-
ing formed into— a circle, and
that the most recent observa-
tions seem to indicate that this
circle is advancing steadily to-
wards the earth.

^‘Our first hypothesis,” Sir
Hcnr>^ said, “was that tlie
spheroids v^ere of a gaseous na-
ture-skinless balloons, you
might say— but this theory is no
longer tenable. The objects,
whatever they may be, are now
many thousands of miles from
their mother planet and are
moving eartliward in a space
vacuum in which any such con-
centrations of gas would have
been instantly dispersed.”

Sir Henry answered in the af-
firmative when asked if an al-
ternative theory had been for-
mulated. “The spheroids could
consist of captive light, or pos-
sibly captive sound, or even of
a captive abstraction— though
how such a phenomenon could
be caused is beyond human
comprehension.”

Speaking with great solemnity
and emphasis, the great scien-
tist added: “The spheroids ap-
pear to be under some form of
central control, and the method-

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

ic manner of their advance
would seem to postulate the ex-
istence on the planet Venus of a
high and veiy^ possibly malign
intelligence.”

He terminated the conference
on a note of foreboding. “\Ve
can only wait and see, or hear—
or both,” he said, “and we shall
not have to wait very' long.”

Thus Carl Maxner, the forgotten
Washington boy, was vindicated.

America reacted calmly to the
news from Jodrell Bank, and no-
where was there any e\idence of
panic. The general attitude was
one of doubt of the validity of Sir
Hilary Biggleswade's conclusions;
it was best expressed by radio
news analyst Gabriel Trumpeter,
who said: “If there were anything
to it we would have been told
about it by our own scientists, ad-
mittedly the best in the world. We
don’t have to listen to foreigners.”

Aging President Kenfeller, then
in his fifth term, issued a brief,
reassuring statement from the
White House. There was abso-
lutely no cause for alaim, the
President said; he was advised
that there was no evidence what-
soever of any hostile intent on the
part of Venus. Our stockpile of
interplanetary' ballistic missiles
was at its peak and the American
Space Force could be depended
upon to cope wTth any situation
that might arise. “Americans may
sleep peacefully in tlieir beds.”

THE TERRA-VENUSIAN WAR OF 1979

49

At his Thursday press confer-
ence, Secretary of State Righteous
W. Rath issued a stem hands-off
warning to Venus. America will
not tolerate aggression in any form
or from any source, he said. Rath
announced that he was flying
to the moon to investigate the
situation on the spot. Reminded
by a reporter that Venus was sev-
eral million miles beyond the
moon, the Secretary replied curtly
that distance meant notliing to
ham.

Newspaper comment reflected
the national complacency. We may
disregard the Daily Mirage which,
in a story headed Venus Blows
Away Bubbles Says Sm Biggles-
wade, offered sympathy to Carl
Maxner for the loss of his astro-
photonic scanner at this propitious
moment. The more stately Wash-
ington Starpost took a middle-of-
the-road course. In an editorial
written entirely in Greek, the
Capital daily is believed to have
castigated a pinchpenny adminis-
tration for failing to establish a
base on the moon, which was the
obvious place from which to ward
off a Venusian attack. ‘'Have we
forgotten,” the Starpost is thought
to have said, “that the moon be-
came American territory as far
back as 1961?”

The Starpost was referring, of
course, to America s first and last
attempts to set foot on the moon.
The first, in May 1961, was only
partially successful, in that the

manned rodcetship missed its tar-
get by the small margin of 6,000
miles. This spaceship is still in
orbit, around the Sun, but has
transmitted no signals for many
years and it is feared that its bat-
teries may be dead. A bipartisan
attempt to land two men on the
moon in August of the same year
was brilliantly successful. The
spacemen, Joel C. Tagliaferro
(Dem.) of Lumberton N. C. and
Richard Roe ( Rep. ) of Albuquer-
que N. Mex., landed their space-
ship on the shores of the Mare
Nectaris, issued forth briefly to
plant our flag in lunar soil, and
returned hastily to their ship and
to earth. Interviewed on their ar-
rival at the Patuxent River Base on
Chesapeake Bay, Tagliaferro was
quoted as saying “Let the Russians
have it.” His fellow traveler con-
curred.

It was exactly a month later
that Congress declared the moon
to be American territory, thus
opening the way to ultimate state-
hood. Russia protested vigorously,
insisting that the United States
was interfering in its internal af-
fairs. “As is well known,” the
Kremlin spokesman said, “the
brave Red Spaceforce has long oc-
cupied the far side of the moon,
ai^ the entire planet is now prop-
erly known as the Lunar Socialist
Soviet Republic.”

There Congress decided to let
the matter rest; in my opinion
wisely.

50

In contrast to America’s com-
placency, Britain and Western
Europe received Sir Hilary Big-
gleswades warning with alarm
and even consternation. Public
tension mounted as the Jodrell
Bank findings were confirmed by
the famed Greenwich Observa-
toiy, from its new home at Gurst-
monceux in Sussex, and by the
scientists manning the skyscanners
at Pic du Midi, ten thousarid feet
up in the French Pyrenees, who
reported that **les globules Venu-
siennes” were now measurably
closer to eartli.

In London, tlie tocsin was
sounded by Viscount Betelgeuse
(better known as Space Marshal
Sir Nigel Cosmore-Gore R.S.F.,
F.R.O.S.S) From the plinth of
the Nelson Column in Trafalgar
Square, Lord Betelgeuse solemnly
warned a sea of eighty-five thou-
sand upturned faces (police esti-
mate) that tlie hour of Britain s
greatest ordeal was about to
strike. “We do not know the na-
ture of the peril that threatens us,”
he said, “but we do know that the
Royal Spaceforce will not be
found wanting. We will fight them
in tlie stratosphere, we will fight
them in the ionosphere, we will
fight them in the troposphere. We
will never surrender.”

A thimderous roar of defiance
mingled with cries of “good old
Beetlejuice” and “oos afraid of
Venus” manifested once again the
unconquerable spirit of the British.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

There were similar demonstra-
tions, less restrained for the most
part, in Paris, Pampeluna, Ham-
burg and other cities. Riots and
looting were reported from Naples
and Kephalonia. Moscow pre-
served an enigmatic silence.

Tlie news of Europe's growing
unease was received in America
witli tolerant amusement. Gabriel
Trumpeter, as usual, struck the
keynote with his statesmanlike
broadcasts. “If,” he declared, “for-
eigners want to go into a tizzy
over tlie wacky ideas of their half-
baked scientists, it is their affair;
it is certainly not ours.” He had
personally telephoned not only
Palomar but also the Naval Ob-
servatory in Washington and the
Pentagon, and all three had as-
sured him categorically that they
had no comment The moral was
clear, he told his vast audience.
If Palomar had seen no Venus
Globes it was because there were
no Venus Globes. Europe was hav-
ing nightmares. Tliese people must
be told once and for all that this
time America was not going to
pull their chestnuts out of the fire.

And America, obeying the
Presidents mandate, slept peace-
fully in its bed.

On the morning of April 16,
America rose yawning from that
same peaceful bed, retrieved the
newspaper from the porch, turned
its face skyward for a look at the
weather— and felt the icy grip of
apocalvq)tic fear. Overhead, shim-

THE TERRA-VENUSIAN WAR OF 1979

51

mering in the bright sunlight, was
an awesome circlet of golden
globes.

For an eternal moment that
morning there was no sound in
America. All movement had
ceased, the streets were empty of
life, radio and television were
hushed. It was as though all people
eveiy^vhere were on their knees.
Then, suddenly, the quiet sound
came, an all-encompassing mur-
mur compounded of the prayers
of women and the deeper urgen-
cies of men. Only the children
were silent, wide-eyed and mar-
veling, unafraid of the overwhelm-
ing glory above.

Tlie radio returned to life and
the people clustered around the
little boxes as tlieir forefathers had
clustered around the hearth, reap-
ing comfort from the radiation.
“Do not panic”, the little boxes
were saying. “The situation is in
hand. Stay Indoors. Close all doors
and windows. Stay close to the
inner walls. I repeat, do not pan-
ic. The Spaceforce is taking over.
Trust our spacemen. DO NOT
PANIC.”

List^ers sensed wavering pan-
ic in the v’^oice as it died, drowned
out by the roaring fury of war.
The Spaceforce screamed into the
skies, jets howling, nuclears throb-
bing, rockets seeking out and
blasting the unattainable and the
unblastable. Bold watchers at the
windows saw the spacecraft tear
through the golden globes and

turn to charge again. Then, at
some unseen signal, the planes
and rockets left the sky and silence
again blanketed the w’^orld, and
the golden globes of Venus, un-
harmed by the fury, floated se-
renely down and settled lightly on
its continents and its oceans.

Television flickered into life and
wavering patterns resolved into
the face of tlie President. In every
living room between Caribou and
San Diego, between Seattle and
Key West, Americans hungiily
watched the little oblong of liglit
and waited for guidance.

There was no anxiety in tlie
face of tlie man in Washington.
His lips were curled into a half-
smile, the strong eyes were serene
behind their eyebrow hedge. He
opened his mouth to speak but no
words came from the screen. In-
stead, the mouth remained open
and twisetd into a prodigious
yawn. The President of the United
States had yawned in the faces of
his fellow citizens. It was masterly
statecraft; it was the guidance
they wanted.

Americans all over the country
yawned back at the President and
went to bed.

The Great Sleep held Americans
unccmscious for a day— or a year
or a decade; nobody ever knew or
will ever know for how long— and
set them free in a world bathed in
soft golden haze. There were no
golden globes; it seemed now that
the globes had never been.

52

The morning paper was waiting
on the porch, slightly damp in the
lambent air and printed on rose-
pink stock, and nobody was sur-
prised by the banner headline:

HAPPY NEW WORLD
TO ALLl

I still have a copy, browning at
tlie edges now, of the Washington
Starpost I picked up on my pordi
on diat unforgettable morning. It
is dated April 17, 1979 ( there is a
question-mark after the date),
and it makes fascinating reading
today. It told for instance that all
the world had experienced the
golden globes, had shared Ameri-
eas experience. In England the
Queen had yawned too, and abol-
ished the ineome tax. The newly
crowned King Charles XI of
France, and the other heads,
crowned and uncrowned, of Eu-
rope had yawned with equally
gratifying effect. The Cham of
•Tartary (formerly China) had
yawned to the extent of dislocating
his jaw, with the result that China
was again sleeping its age-long
sleep. The Man in the Kremlin
had done more than yawn. He
had beaten the Iron Curtain into
tractor parts, freed the satellites
(ineluding the moon) and sent a

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

message of brotherly love to the
President and capitalists of the
United States.

There were other news items of
less import but equal significance.
Arkansas reported the election, by
unanimous vote, of a Negro gov-
ernor. Reno and other separation
centers told of a sensational de-
cline in the number of divorce
suits, and in Washington the Post
OflBce Department announced
with gratification that in all parts
of the country dogs were fawning
on mail carriers. From Ireland
came the news that an heroic
monument to Ohver Cromwell
had been unveiled, to popular ac-
claim, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
And Hollywood let it be known
that henceforth television shoot-
ings would be effected exclusively
with cupid arrows.

It was wonderful and still is.

Over Washington the air is so
clear that my son, Carl Maxner,
Junior, has been making some in-
teresting observations of the plan-
et Venus by means of the powerful
new astrophotonic scanner I gave
him for Christmas. He has just told
me they are fighting on Venus.

His theory, which I am inclined
to accept, is that Venus sent the
world its love, keeping none back
for itself.

Monsieur Duperrier would have rejoiced in the halo God
had given him— had not his wife disapproved so strongly,
were it less conspicuous, and if divesting himself of it had
not proved so uncommonly difficult.

THE STATE OF GRACE

by Marcel Ayme

(translated by Norman Denny)

In the year 1939 the best
Christian in the Rue Gabrielle, and
indeed in all Montmartre, was a
certain Monsieur Duperrier, a man
of such piety, and uprightness
and charity that God, without
awaiting his deatli, and while he
was still in the prime of life,
crowned his head with a halo
which never left it by day or by
night. Like those in Paradise this
halo, although made of some im-
material substance, manifested it-
self in die fonn of a whitish ring
which looked as though it might
have been cut out of fairly stiff
cardboard, and shed a tender light,
M Duperrier wore it gratefully,
with devout thanks to Heaven for
a distinction which, however, his
modesty did not permit him to re-
gard as a fonnal undertaking in
respect of the hereafter. He would
have been unquestionably the hap-

piest of men had his wife, instead
of rejoicing in this signal mark of
the Divine approval, not received
it with outspoken resentment and
exasperation.

'Well really, upon my word,* the
lady said, 'what do you think you
look like going round in a thing
like that, and what do you suppose
the neighbours and tlie trades-
people will say, not to mention my
cousin Leopold? I never in my life
saw anything so ridiculous. You’ll
have the whole neighbourhood
talking.’

Mmc Duperrier was an admir-
able woman, of outstanding piety
and impeccable conduct, but she
had not yet understood the vanity
of the things of this world. Like so
many people whose aspirations to
virtue are marred by a certain lack
of logic, she thought it more im-
portant to be esteemed by her con-

Froin the hook across Paris and other stories by Marcel Aym6; © 1947 hy
JJhrarie GaUimord; publisJied by Harper & Brothers

53

54

cierge than by her Creator. Her
terror lest she should be ques-
tioned on the subject of the halo
by one of the neighbours or by the
milkman had from the very outset
an embittering effect upon her.
She made repeated attempts to
snatch away the shimmering plate
of light that adorned her hus-
bands cranium, but with no more
effect than if she had tried to
grasp a sunbeam, and without al-
tering its position by a hairV
breadth. Girdling the top of his
forehead where the hair began, the
halo hung low over the back of his
neck, with a slight tilt which gave
it a coquettish look.

The foretaste of beatitude did
not cause Duperrier to overlook
tlie consideration he owed to his
wife's peace of mind. He himself
possessed too great a sense of dis-
cretion and modesty not to per-
ceive that there were grounds for
her disquiet. The gifts of God, es-
pecially when they wear a some-
what gratuitous aspect, arc sel-
dom accorded the respect they de-
serve, and the w'orld is all too
ready to find in them a subject of
malicious gossip.

Duperrier did his utmost, so far
as the thing was possible, to make
himself at all times inconspicuous.
Regretfully putting aside the
bowler hat which he had hitherto
regarded as an indispensable at-
tribute of his accountant’s calling,
he took to wearing a large felt hat,
light in colour, of which the wide

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

brim exactly covered the halo pro-
vided he wore it rakishly on the
back of his head. Thus clad, there
was nothing startlingly out-of-the-
way in his appearance to attract
the attention of the passer-by. The
brim of his hat merely had a slight
phosphorescence which by day-
light might pass for the sheen on
the surface of smooth felt. During
office hours he w as equally success-
ful in avoiding the notice of his
employer and fellow-workers. His
desk, in the small shoe factory in
Menilmontant where he kept the
books, was situated in a glass-
paned cubby-hole between two
workshops, and his state of isola-
tion saved him from awkward
questions. He wore the hat all day,
and no one was sufficiently inter-
ested to ask him why he did so.

But these precautions did not
suffice to allay his wife’s misgiv-
ings. It seemed to her that the
halo must already be a subject of
comment among the ladies of the
district, and she went almost fur-
tively about tlie streets adjoining
the Rue Gabrielle, her buttocks
contracted and her heart WTung
with agonising suspicions, con-
vinced that she heard the echo of
mocking laughter as she passed.
To this worthy woman who had
never had any ambition other than
to keep her place in a social sphere
ruled by the cult of the absolute
norm, the glaring eccentricity
with which her husband had been
afflicted rapidly assumed cata-

THE STATE OF GRACE

55

strophic proportions. Its very im-
probability made it monstrous.
Nothing would have induced her
to accompany him out of doors.
The evenings and Sunday after-
noons which they had previously
devoted to small outings and visits
to friends were now passed in a
solitary intimacy which became
daily more oppressive. In the liv-
ing-room of light oak where be-
tween meals the long leisure hours
dragged by, Mme Duperrier, un-
able to knit a single stitch, would
sit bitterly contemplating the
halo, while Duperrier, generally
reading some work of devotion and
feeling tlie brush of angels* wings,
wore an expression of beatific rap-
ture which added to her fury.

From time to time, however, he
would glance solicitously at her,
and noting the expression of angry
disapproval on her face would feel
a regret which was incompatible
with the gratitude he owed to
Heaven, so that this in its turn
inspired him with a feeling of re-
morse at one remove.

So painful a state of affairs
could not long continue without
imperilling the unhappy woman *s
mental equilibrium. She began
presently to complain that the light
of the halo, bathing the pillows,
made it impossible for her to sleep
at nights. Duperrier, who some-
times made use of the divine il-
lumination to read a chapter of the
Scriptures, w^as obliged to concede
the justice of this grievance, and

he began to be afflicted wdth a
sense of guilt. Finally, certain
events, highly deplorable in their
consequences, transformed this
state of unease into one of acute
crisis.

Upon setting out for tlie office
one morning, Duperrier passed a
funeral in the Rue Gabrielle, with-
in a few^ yards of their house. He
had become accustomed, outra-
geous though it was to his natural
sense of courtesy, to greet ac-
quaintances by merely raising a
hand to his hat; but being tlius
confronted by the near presence
of the dead he decided, after
thinking the matter over, that
nothing could relieve him of tlie
obligation to uncover himself en-
tirely. Several shopkeepers, yawn-
ing in their doorways, blinked at
the sight of the halo, and gathered
together to discuss the phenome-
non. When she came out to do her
shopping Mme Duperrier w^as as-
sailed wdth questions, and in a
state of extreme agitation uttered
denials whose very vehemence ap-
peared suspect. Upon his return
home at midday her husband
found her in a state of nervous
crisis which caused him to fear for
her reason.

Take off that halo!’ she cried.
Take it off instantly! I never want
to see it again!*

Duperrier gently reminded her
that it was not in his power to re-
move it, whereupon she cried
still more loudly:

56

If you had any consideration
for me you’d find some way of
getting rid of it. You’re simply
selfish, that’s what you are!’

These words, to which he pru-
dently made no reply, gave Du-
perrier much food for thought.
And on the following day a sec-
ond incident occurred to point to
the inevitable conclusion. Duper-
rier never missed early morning
Mass, and since he had become
endowed with the odour of sanctity
he had taken to hearing it at the
Basilica of the Sacre-Coeur. Here
he was obliged to remove his hat,
but the church is a large one and
at that hour of the morning the
congregation was sufficiently
sparse to make it a simple matter
for him to hide behind a pillar.

On this particular occasion,
however, he must have been less
circumspect than usual. As he was
leaving the church after the serv-
ice an elderly spinster flung her-
self at his feet crying, *St. Joseph!
St. Joseph!’, and kissed the hem
of his overcoat. Duperrier beat a
hasty retreat, flattered but con-
siderably put out at recognising
his adorer, who lived only a few
doors away. A few hours later the
devoted creature burst into the
apartment, where Mme Duperrier
was alone, uttering cries of — *St.
Joseph! I want to see St. Joseph!’

Although somewhat lacking in
brilliant and picturesque qualities,
St. Joseph is nevertheless an excel-
lent saint; but his unsensational

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

merits, with their flavour of solid
craftsmanship and passive good-
will, seem to have brought upon
him some degree of injustice.
There are indeed persons, some of
the utmost piety, who, without
even being conscious of it, associ-
ate the notion of naive complai-
sance with the part he played in
the Nativity. This impression of
simple-mindedness is further en-
hanced by the habit of super-im-
posing upon the figure of the saint
the recollection of that other Jo-
seph who resisted the advances of
Potiphar’s wife.

Mme Duperrier had no great
respect for the presumed sanctity
of her husband, but this fervour
of adoration which with loud cries
invoked -him by the name of St.
Joseph seemed to her to add the
finishing touch to his shame and
absurdity. Goaded into a state of
almost demented fury, she chased
the visitor out of the apartment
with an umbrella and then
smashed several piles of plates.

Her first act upon her husband’s
return was to have hysterics, and
when finally she had regained her
self-control she said:

Tor the last time I ask you to
get rid of that halo. You can do it
if you choose. You know you can.’
Duperrier hung his head, not
daring to ask how she tliought he
should go about it, and she went
on;

‘It’s perfectly simple. You have
only to sin.’

THE STATE OF GRACE

57

Uttering no word of protest,
Duperrier withdrew to the bed-
room to pray.

‘Almighty God,' he said in sub-
stance, ‘you have granted me the
highest reward that man may hope
for upon earth, excepting martyr-
dom. I thank you, Lord, but I am
married and I share with my wife
the bread of tribulation which you
deign to send us, no less than the
honey of your favour. Only thus
can a devout couple hope to walk
in your footsteps. And it so hap-
pens that my wife cannot endure
the sight or even the thought of
my halo, not at all because it is a
gift bestowed by Heaven but sim-
ply because it’s a halo. You know
what women are. When some un-
accustomed happening does not
chance to kindle their enthusiasm
it is likely to upset all the store of
rules and harmonies which diey
keep lodged in their little heads.
No one can prevent this, and
though my wife should live to be a
hundred dicre will never be any
place for my halo in her scheme
of things. Oh God, you who see
into my heart, you know how little
store I set by my personal tran-
quillity and the evening slippers
by die fireside. For the rapture of
wearing upon my head the token
of your goodwill I would gladly
suffer even the most violent do-
mestic upheavals. But, alas, it is
not my own peace of mind that is
imperilled. My wife is losing all
taste for life. Worse still, I can see

the day approaching when her ha-
tred of my halo will cause her to
revile Him who bestowed it upon
me. Am I to allow the life-compan-
ion you chose for me to die and
damn her soul for all eternity
without making an effort to save
her? I find myself today at the
parting of the ways, and the safe
road does not appear to me to be
the more merciful. That your spirit
of infinite justice may talk to me
with the voice of my conscience is
the prayer which in this hour of
my perplexity I lay at your radiant
feet, oh Lord.'

Scarcely had Duperrier con-
cluded this prayer dian his con-
science declared itself in favour of
the way of sin, making of this an
act of duty demanded by Christian
charity. He returned to the living-
room, where his wife awaited him,
grinding her teeth.

‘God is just,' he said, with his
thumbs in the armholes of his
waistcoat. ‘He knew what he was
doing when he gave me my halo.
The truth is that I deserve it more
than any man alive. They don’t
make men like me in these days.
When I reflect upon the vileness
of the human herd and then con-
sider tlie manifold perfections em-
bodied in myself I am tempted to
spit in the faces of the people in
the street. God has rewarded me,
it is true, but if the Church had
any regard for justice I should be
an archbishop at the very least.’

Duperrier had chosen the sin

58

of pride, which enabled him,
while exalting his own merits, in
the same breath to praise God,
who had singled him out. His wife
was not slow to realise that he
was sinning deliberately and at
once entered into the spirit of the
thing.

*My angel,* she said, ‘you will
never know how proud I am of
you. My cousin Leopold, with his
car and his villa at Vesinet, is not
worthy to unloose the latchet of
your shoe.’

That is precisely my own opin-
ion. If I had chosen to concern
myself with sordid matters I could
have amassed a fortune as easily
as any man, and a much bigger
one than Leopold’s, but I chose
to follow a different road and my
triumph is of another kind, I de-
spise his money as I despise the
man himself and all the countless
other half-wits who are incapable
of perceiving the grandeur of my
modest existence. They have eyes
and see not.’

The utterance of sentiments
such as these, spoken at first from
half-closed lips, his heart rent with
shame, became within a short time,
a simple matter for Duperrier, a
habit costing him no effort at all.
And such is the power of words
over the human mind that it was
not long before he accepted them
as valid currency. His wife, how-
ever, anxiously watching the halo,
and seeing that its lustre showed
no sign of diminishing, began to

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

suspect that her husband’s sin was
lacking in weight and substance.
Duperrier readily agreed with this.

'Nothing could be more true,’ he
said. ‘I thought I was giving way
to pride when in fact I was merely
expressing the most simple and
obvious of truths. When a man has
attained to the uttermost degree of
perfection, as I have done, the
word “pride” ceases to have any
meaning.’

This did not prevent him from
continuing to extol his merits, but
at the same time he recognised the
necessity for embarking upon some
other form of sin. It appeared to
him that gluttony was, of the
Deadly Sins, the one most suited
to his purpose, which was to rid
himself of the halo without too
far forfeiting the goodwill of
Heaven. He was supported in this
conclusion by the recollection,
from his childhood days, of gentle
scoldings for excessive indulgence
in jam or chocolate. Filled with
hope, his wife set about the prepa-
ration of rich dishes whose variety
enhanced their savour. The Du-
perriers’ dinner-table was loaded
with game, pate, river-trout, lob-
ster, sweets, pastries and vintage
wines. Their meals lasted twice as
long as hitherto, if not three
times. Nothing could have been
more hideous and revolting than
the spectacle of Duperrier, his
napkin tied round his neck, his
face crimson and his eyes glazed
with satiation, loading his plate

THE STATE OF GRACE

59

with a thiird helping, washing
down roast and stuflBng with great
gulps of claret, belching, dribbling
sauce and gravy, and perspiring
freely under his halo. Before long
he had developed such a taste for
good cooking and rich repasts that
he frequently rebuked his wife for
an over-cooked joint or an unsuc-
cessful mayonnaise. One evening,
annoyed by his incessant grum-
bling, she said sharply:

Tour halo seems to be flourish-
ing. Anyone would think it was
growing fat on my cooking, just as
you are. It looks to me as though
gluttony isn’t a sin after all. The
only thing against it is that it
costs money, and I can see no
reason why I shouldn’t put you
back on vegetable soup and spa-
ghetti.”

That’s enough of that!’ roared
Duperrier. Tut me back on vege-
table soup and spaghetti, will you?
By God, I’d like to see you try! Do
you think I don’t know what I’m
doing? Put me back on spaghetti,
indeed! The insolence! Here am I,
wallowing in sin just to oblige
you, and that’s the way you talk.
Don’t let me hear another word.
It would serve you right if I
slapped your face.^

One sin leads to another, in
short, and thwarted greed, no less
than pride, promotes anger. Du-
perrier allowed himself to fall into
this new sin without really know-
ing whether he was doing it for his
wife’s sake or because he enjoyed

it. This man who had hitherto been
distinguished by the gentleness
and equability of his nature now
became given to thunderous rages;
he smashed the crockery and on
occasions went so far as to strike
his wife. He even swore, invoking
the name of his Creator. But his
outbursts, growing steadily more
frequent, did not save him from
being both arrogant and glutton-
ous. He was, in fact, now sinning
in three different ways, and Mme
Duperrier mused darkly on God’s
infinite indulgence.

The fact is that the noblest of
virtues can continue to flourish
in a soul sullied by sin. Proud,
gluttonous and choleric, Duperrier
nevertheless remained steeped in
Christian charity, nor had he lost
anything of his lofty sense of duty
as a man and a husband. Finding
that Heaven remained unmoved by
his anger, he resolved to be envi-
ous as well. To tell the truth,
without his knowing it, envy had
already crept into his soul. Rich
feeding, which puts a burden on
the liver, and pride, which stirs
the sense of injustice, may dispose
even the best of men to envy his
neighbour. And anger lent a note
of hatred to Duperrier’s envy.

He became jealous of his rela-
tions, his friends, his employer,
the shopkeepers of the neighboiu:-
hood and even the stars of sport
and screen whose photographs ap-
peared in the papers. Everything
infuriated him, and he was ^ovm

60

to tremble with ignoble rage at the
thought that the people next door
possessed a cutlery service with sil-
ver handles, whereas his own were
only of bone.

But the halo continued to glow
with undiminished brightness. In-
stead of being dismayed by this,
he concluded that his sins were
lacking in reality, and he had no
difficulty in reasoning that his
supposed glutttony did not in fact
exceed the natural demands of a
healthy appetite, while his anger
and his envy merely bore witness
to a lofty craving for justice. It
was the halo itself, however, which
furnished him with the most solid
arguments.

‘I'm bound to say I would have
expected Heaven to be a little
more fussy,’ his wife said. 'If all
your gluttony and boasting and
brutality and malice have done
nothing to dim your halo. It does-
n’t look as though I need worry
about my place in Paradise.’

‘Hold your jaw I* roared the furi-
ous man. ‘How much longer have
I got to listen to your nagging? I’m
fed up with it. You think it funny,
do you, that a saintly character
like myself should have to plunge
into sin for the sake of your blasted
peace of mind? Stow it, d’you hear
me?’

The tone of these replies was
clearly lacking in that suavity
which may rightly be looked for in
a man enhaloed by the glory of
God. Since he had entered upon

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

the paths of sin Duperrier had be-
come increasingly given to strong
language. His formerly ascetic
countenance was becoming bloat-
ed with rich food. Not only was
his vocabulary growing coarse, but
a similar vulgarity was invading
his thoughts. His vision of Para-
dise, for example, had undergone
a notable transformation. Instead
of appearing to him as a symphony
of souls in robes of cellophane,
the dwelling-place of the elect
came to look more and more like a
vast dining-room. Mme Duperrier
did not fail to observe the changes
that were overtaking her husband
and even to feel some anxiety for
the future. Nevertheless, the
thought of his possible descent in-
to the abyss still did not outweigh
in her mind the horror of singular-
ity. Rather than an enhaloed Du-
perrier she would have preferred a
husband who was an atheist, a de-
bauchee and as crude of speech as
her cousin Leopold. At least she
w^ould not then have to blush for
him before the milkman.

No especial decision was called
for on the part of Duperrier for
him to lapse into the sin of sloth.
The arrogant belief that he was re-
quired at the office to perform tasks
unw^orthy of his merits, together
w^ijth the drowsiness caused by
heavy eating and drinking, made
him naturally disposed to be idle;
and since he had sufficient conceit
to believe tliat he must excel in all
things, even the worst, he very

THE STATE OF GRACE

61

soon became a model of indolence.
The day his indignant employer
sacked him, he received the sen-
tence with his hat in his hand.

‘What's that on your head?' his
employer asked.

‘A halo,' said Duperrier.

‘Is it indeed? And I suppose
that's what you've been fooling
around with when you were sup-
posed to be working?'

When he told his wife of his
dismissal, she asked him what he
intended to do next.

‘It seems to me that this would
be a good moment to try tlie sin
of avarice,' he answered gady.

Of all the Deadly Sins, avarice
was the one that called for the
greatest effort of willpower on his
part. To those not bom avaricious
it is the vice offering the fewest
easy allurements, and when it is
adopted on principle there is noth-
ing to distinguish it, at least in
the early stages, from that most
sterling of all virtues, thrift.

Duperrier subjected himself to
severe disciplines, such as confin-
ing himself to gluttony, and thus
succeeded in gaining a solid repu-
tation for avarice among his
friends and acquaintances. He
really liked money for its own
sake, and was better able than
most people to experience the ma-
licious thrill which misers feel at
the thought that they control a
source of creative energy and pre-
vent it from functioning. Count-
ing up his savings, the fruit of a

hitherto laborious existence, he
came by degrees to know the hide-
ous pleasure of harming others by
damming a current of exchange
and of life. This outcome, simply
because it was painfully achieved,
filled Mme Duperrier with hope.
Her husband had yielded so easily
to the seductions of the other sins
that God, she thought, could not
condemn him very severely for an
innocent, animal surrender which
made him appear rather a victim
deserving of compassion. His de-
liberate and patient progress along
tlie road of avarice, on the otlier
hand, could only be the fruit of a
perverse desire which was like a
direct challenge to Heaven.

Nevertheless, although Duper-
rier became miserly to the point
of putting trouser-buttons in the
collection-bag, the brilliance and
size of the halo remained unim-
paired. This new setback, duly
noted, plunged husband and wife
into despair.

Proud, gluttonous, angry, envi-
ous, slothful and avaricious, Du-
perrier felt that his soul was still
perfumed with innocence. Deadly
though they were, the six sins he
had thus far practised were never-
theless such as a first communicant
may confess to without despairing.
The deadliest of all, lust, filled
him with horror. The others, it
seemed to him, might be said to
exist almost outside the sphere of
God's notice. In the case of each,
sin or peccadillo, it all depended

62

oil tlie size of the dose. But lust,
the sin of the fiesh, meant un-
qualified acceptance of the Dev-
il’s work. The enchantments of the
night were a foretaste of the burn-
ing shades of Hell, the darting
tongues were like the flames of
eternit}', the moans of ecstasy, the
writhing bodies, these did but her-
ald the wailing of the damned
and the convulsions of flesh racked
1)\ endless torment.

Duperrier had not deliberately
reserved the sin of the flesh to the
last: he had simply refused to con-
template it. Mme Duperrier herself
could not think of it without dis-
quiet. For many years the oair had
lived in a state of delicious chas-
tity, their nightly rest attended,
until the coming of the halo, by
dreams as pure as the uTven snow.
As she thought of it, the recollec-
tion of tliose years of continence
was a source of considerable an-
noyance to Mme Duperrier, for she
did not doubt that the halo was
the result. Plainly that lily-white
nimbus could be undone by lust
alone.

Duperrier, after obstinately re-
sisting his wife’s persuasions, at
length allowed himself to be over-
done. Once again his sense of duty
cast out fear. Having reached the
decision he was embarrassed by his
ignorance; but his wife, who
thought of everything, bought him
a revolting book in which all the
essentials were set forth in the
form of plain and simple instruc-

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

tion. The night-time spectacle of
that saintly man, the halo encir-
cling his head, reading a chapter
of the abominable work to his
wife, was a poignant one indeed.
Often his voice trembled at some
infamous w'ord or some image more
hideously evocative than the rest.

Having thus achieved a theo-
retical mastery of the subject, he
still delayed while he considered
whetlier this last sin should be
consummated in domestic intima-
cy or elsewhere. Mme Duperrier
took the view that it should all be
done at home, adducing reasons of
economy which did not fail to
weigh with him; but having con-
sidered all the pros and cons he
concluded that he had no need to
involve her in vile practices which
might be prejudicial to her own
salvation. As a loyal husband he
valiantly resolved that he alone
should run the risks.

Thereafter Duperrier spent most
of his nights in disreputable hotels
where he pursued his initiation in
company with the professionals of
the quarter. The halo, which he
could not conceal from these
wretched associates, led to his
finding himself in various odd sit-
uations, sometimes embarrassing
and sometimes advantageous.

In the beginning, owing to his
anxiety to conform to the instruc-
tions in his manual, he sinned with
little exaltation but rather with the
methodical application of a dancer
learning a new step or figure of cho-

THE STATE OF GRACE

63 .

reograph 3 \ However, the desire for
perfection to which his pride im-
pelled him soon achieved its la-
mentable reward in the notoriety
which he gained among die wom-
en wdth whom he consorted. Al-
though he came to take the liveliest
pleasure in these pursuits, Duper-
rier nevertheless found them ex-
pensive and was cnielly afflicted in
his avarice.

One evening on the Place Pigalle
he made the acquaintance of a
creature twenty years of age, al-
ready a lost soul, whose name was
Marie-Jannick. It was for her, so it
is believed, that the poet Maurice
Fombeure wrote die charming
lines:

C'est MariC'Jannick
De Landivisiati
Qui tue les nioiistiqnes
Avec son sabot.

Marie-Jannick had come from
Brittany six months previously to
go into service as maid-of-all-work
in the home of a municipal coun-
cillor who was both a socialist and
an atheist. Finding herself unable
to endure the life of this godless
household, she had given notice
and was now courageously earning
her living on the Boulevard de
Clichy. As was to be expected, the
halo made a deep impression on
that litde religious soul. To Marie-

Jannick, Duperrier seemed the
equal of St. Yves and St. Ronan,
and he, on his side, was not slow
to perceive the influence he had
over her and to turn it to profit.

Thus it is that on this very day,
the 22nd February of the year
1944, amid the darkness of winter
and of war, Marie-Jannick, who
will shordy be twenty-five, may
be seen walking her beat on the
Boulevard de Clichy. During the
black-out hours the stroller be-
tween the Place Pigalle and the
Rue des Martyrs may be startled
to observe, floating and swaying
in the darkness, a mysterious cir-
cle of light that looks rather like a
ring of Saturn. It is Duperrier, his
head adorned with the glorious
halo which he no longer seeks to
conceal from the curiosity of all
and sundry; Duperrier, burdened
with the weight of the seven Dead-
ly Sins, who, lost to all shame,
supervises the labours of Marie-
Jannick, administering a smart
kick in the pants when her zeal
flags, and waiting at the hotel door
to count her takings by the light
of the halo.

But from the depths of his deg-
radation, through the dark night
of his conscience, a murmur yet
rises from time to time to his lips,
a prayer of thanksgiving for the
absolute gratuity of the gifts of
God.

On paper, Joe Vargo was an unimportant member of the
exploratory expedition to Chronos; Joe, however, was a
realist, and in alien surroundings, that can be a quality
worth more than gold, great wisdom, or atomic guns. . . .

THE HOMING INSTINCT
OF JOE VARGO

by Stephen Barr

Just out of sight of Manhat-
tan Island in the approach to its
waterways is a small artificial is-
land, put there during World War
III for some forgotten military
purpose. It has been abandoned
for many years and is never visited
— indeed it is never seen except
by passing planes and is no more a
matter of notice than a stone be-
side tlio road. It is out of sight of
ships except as a lump on the
horizon, and large and small
craft, fishing or otherwise, must
steer clear of it because of tlie
five-mile-wide under-water con-
crete shelf that surrounds it and
makes tlie adjacent sea unnaviga-
ble.

To a man standing at the top of
its rusted tower the glow of New
Yorks lights can be seen in tlic
distance when the sky is clear at
night. A man stood there now:
but his eyes were fixed on a star
that shone ovehead, one of the

stars that, as astronomers reckon,
lie close to us. This star has no
particular interest for most peo-
ple, but tliis man knew it well as
the small white sun around which
revolves the planet Chronos,

Just before the termination of
the Second Chronos Expedition it
was decided that it would be the
last expedition to Chronos. Or at
least for now; unless at some fu-
ture date a means was contrived to
blow up a planet and save the
pieces. With existing technics the
former was entirely practicable
but the pieces would not be. The
half-life of their untouchableness
would be about that of a man,

Chronos has inside of it min-
erals that the expedition wanted,
but on tlie outside it supported a
form of life so virulent and com-
bative that man could not stay
there. It has been tried, but as Joe
Vargo said, *‘ItTl allow one, or

64

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

65

maybe two people aboard — then it
gets its dander up.**

Joe Vargo was the subject of an-
other decision of the expedition,
which was made by the crew, and
it was to leave him behind when
they went home. There was noth-
ing wrong with Joe except that he
was always right. Joe had been
with the first expedition and had
told the Director they wouldn't
stay there a week. He hadn’t said
why; he just said they wouldn’t.
As it happened they left in less
than that.

The life-form that made
Chronos untenable was an organ-
ism that resembled the slime on
wet rocks, except this slime was on
dry rocks as well, and when it
chose to do so it moved over onto
other things, such as life-forms. It
was never given a name, the ex-
pedition always referred to it as It.

The day the first expedition
landed. It was not immediately
noticed. Menken, the Director,
said, “I think we’d better divide
into task-forces. The long-distance
boys say there’s minerals here, so I
want O’Neil to take whoever he
needs and start checking on that.
I. don’t want any time wasted in
experiments with the possible toxic
effects of our environment. Let’s
just assume that the atmosphere is
poisonous, the water’s poisonous,
the plants are poisonous and ev-
erything is infested with deadly
diseases. So keep your suits on and
your helmets shut.

'Wilkes will take a look at the
flora and fauna if any, and keep
in constant touch, as there just
might be something dangerous, al-
though I personally doubt it — ”

Joe Vargo interrupted him.

“Of course I'm only a lowly
navigator and I don’t know about
these things, but Doctor, some-
thing tells me we ought to watch
our step. Something large and un-
canny is watching us, I bet you.”

Menken frowned slightly. “Joe,
for Pete’s sake, button it, will
you?” He scratched his ear and
went on. “Well, as I say, keep in
constant touch. I will head up a
group consisting of everybody else,
except cook, to batten down the
hatches, make a shelter and check
on the weather conditions. If I
spend another night in that
damned ship 111 . . . Well, any-
way, get moving. Cook, I want to
see you.”

The personnel had separated
and Joe Vargo, by going to his
control cabin, contrived not to be
on any of the three details. As
soon as the coast was clear he wan-
dered off by himself toward a rise
in the ground that was covered
with brownish shrubs. The air —
it must be air, he thought — was
very clear and the shadows in-
tense and sharp. This was, he sup-
posed, because the sun that shone
on them was so tiny and so bright,
impossible to look at straight. A
white dwarf: distant, but burning
fiercely and warming the land-

66

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

scape. Chronos was bigger than
Earth but not much heavier so
that the pull of gravity felt natu-
ral, not like tlie giddiness on the
satellites.

The minute sample of the plan-
et's surface that he could see re-
minded him of North Africa,
though the details were different.
The plants — surely they were
plants — were mostly the reddish
color of a copper beech and the
leaves of tlie bushes were not en-
tirely separate, but joined by a
continuous web as are the fingers
of a frog. A few birds were in the
air. At least to Joe Vargo they re-
sembled birds. Far across the roll-
ing sandy ground were stands of
tall palm-like trees around which
die birds hovered, and further off
still there was a lake, and on the
horizon a range of mountains, not
blue in this hard light, but black.
Perhaps nearer to the planet's
equator it would resemble Central
Africa, and nearer to the poles
, . . who knew — perhaps polar
bears? Too far to think about.

Joe, disregarding the director's
admonition, opened his helmet
valve and tested the atmosphere
briefly. Air, just as he thought.
Doctor Menken was probably only
fooling. A comical fellow, their di-
rector. Joe took off his helmet and
breathed deeply. There was an un-
familiar tang, almost spicy, and he
toyed with the idea of taking off
his protective suit as well, but
thought better of it; there might be

things much worse than poison ivy
around. He put his helmet on
again so as to hear any message
that might come over the inter-
com. I wonder, he thought, if I’d
have time to have a look at that
lake? He decided to chance it; his
absence wouldn't be noticed for a
while, each group would assume
he was witli another. A small liz-
ard-like animal wdth six legs ran
across his lx)ot. Over on still higher
ground where some trees were he
heard odd squawkings, and the
birds, taking alarm at something,
rose into the still air and were
flapping around in excitement.

As he drew closer, Joe Vargo
could make out that the trees grew
in more or less of a circle. Some-
thing seemed to be moving in a
jerky. way against the sky-line at
their feet. Then he could no long-
er see it. As he crested the rise, he
found a small pond lying in the
middle of the trees. Except for the
shadows cast by the bird over his
head nothing moved. The surface
of the water was still, and it was
dark and opaque. Around the edge
were damp stones but nothing re-
sembling moss or sedges. He stood
regarding the noncommittal scene
without going any nearer. What
had frightened the birds? Some-
thing'made his spine tingle, and he
turned back toward camp and the
ship.

Halfway back, his intercom
buzzed and Menken's voice said,
“Vargo? Where the hell are you?"

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FIRST CLASS

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

67

Joe didn't answer.

‘*Vargo? I'm not trying to play
nurse-maid, damn it! I asked you
and everybody else to keep in
touch. Come in.”

Let him wonder, thought Joe. I
just had my helmet off, so I could-
n't hear him. That’s why I'm not
answering: I didn't hear hhn.
Then he remembered the order
about suits and helmets.

”O.K., Doc. I'm on my way.”

”Where the hell are you? Or do
you know?”

”Well, speaking as a lowly navi-
gator, I’d say I was a mile and a
half from the ship in the direction
of what seems to be just about due
west if this one turns the same way
as Earth.” There was a silence and
then Menken's voice came more
strongly, as though he had come
closer to the mike or the power had
been turned up.

'"Snap into it Joe, will you? We
may have to take off — ” There were
confused background noises and
he could hear a voice saying,
‘'Nothing. Nothing at all, I tell
you . . .”

Joe Vargo looked back at the
ring of trees, now deserted by the
flying creatures, and down at his
feet as another of the little six-
legged lizards ran across them.
There were several others in sight
and they seemed not to notice
him. His boots were damp, he saw,
and he w^ondered how they could
be: he had not gone near the
pond, and the ground was dr}\

Could it be the lizards? No, they
were as dry as the sandy ground
they infested and left no trail. The
shadows were dark, even tliose
cast by stones, and he saw that his
own shadow stretched far in front
of him; the tiny fierce sun was set-
ting, but losing nothing of its bril-
liance as it approached tlie far-off
mountain range.

In a little while he saw tlic top
of their ship over the rise of ground
with the brown shrubs. It was in
the direction that he knew it
should be, but it was a little far-
ther than he remembered. His legs
felt much more tired than the rest
of his body, but w^alking through
sand was the reason; not being
thirty-nine. . . . My body is as
good as my mind, he thought.
Mens corpora in reverse. The fa-
tigue of his legs became quite out
of proportion, and he looked at
them. The boot parts of his suit
were damp up to the knees. Sweat?
He felt himself: his forehead, his
wrists, his underwarms; no swxat.
It w^as getting colder.

Inside the ship Menken was
cursing. The ports were closed and
he had his suit and helmet off. He
was surrounded by a group of con-
fused men.

“Get him onto a cot, damn it!”

“All right now, heave . . .”

“There we are.”

“Which one of you guys is a
medic?” Exchange of glances but
no answ^er.

68,

‘‘Then for Pfete‘s sake, who was
on Wilkes' detail? Somebody here
must be an M.D.”

“I thought you were, sir.”

Menken clenched his hands in
the air.

“Thirty years ago! Get to it,
damn it.”

Doctor Wilkes lay on his back,
breathing harshly, his face as pale
as paper. His eyelids were open at
the bottom but the eyes were rolled
up and the irises invisible. There
were bruises on his elbows and
knees where he had fallen, and his
boots were wet.

“Pulse O.K. Bit fast.”

“Respiration very fast; regular.”

“Got the bug-check yet?”

“In a minute. Blood's O.K.”

“Electro looks funny — Hold
everything.”

“We're holding it.”

“Bug-check O.K., except a trace
of the stuff from — ”

“Electro's way off! Get him
ready for a shot, quick!”

“K injection?”

Doctor Wilkes's eyes rolled
down and opened. He sat up.

“What the hell are you doing?”
he said in a weak voice. “I faint-
ed.”

“Take it easy. Lie back.”

“I'm all right now, I tell you.
I — ” The hypodermic was not
felt, he lay back and closed his
eyes. Menken looked at the group
around tlie sick doctor and then at
his watch.

“What was he saying when you

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

brought him in?” he asked. “You
were all making such a row I
couldn’t make it out.”

One of the men bending over
the dials of the electro said with-
out turning, “He said he got his
foot stuck in a rock. Then he col-
lapsed. I caught him.”

“He said he what?”

The man at the dials wrote a
number on a pad before answer-
ing. Then he said, “Something like
white and trembling.” Another
man turned to Menken.

“He said to take his boots off.
He said his foot — ”

“All right, we’ll go into that lat-
er when he comes to. How is he?”

“We can't tell, sir. He's very
weak.”

Menken looked at his watch
again. He reached over and picked
up his helmet and spoke into the
intercom, “Vargo? Where the hell
are you?” There was no answer.
Just like Vargo. Joe Vargo the
smart guy, the never-around man.
Off somewhere else.

“Vargo? I'm not trying to play
nurse-maid, damn it!” He ought to
know that; he puts me in a spot
with the other guys — just because
I was his instructor in college he
gets away with it. He could be in
serious trouble and he'd be too
proud to admit it. “I asked you and
everybody else to keep in touch.
Come in.” Silence. No, he isn't in
trouble: he never really is. Prob-
ably took off his helmet and can't
hear me. • • •

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

69

One of the medics said, “He's
coming out of it now, Doctor
Menken. I think maybe he*s going
to be O.K.’' Menken put down his
helmet and went over to look at
Wilkes, who was breathing more
quietly, but was as white as before.
He seemed to be asleep instead of
in a private battle. Menken's hel-
met squeeked with a nearly inau-
dible message. The little voice
sounded like a kitten in a drain-
pipe, but it was unmistakable.

“O.K., Doc. Tm on my way."

An hour and a half later Wil-
liam H. Wilkes, M.D., came to,
sat up on his cot and smiled at
them and said, “Funny thing. I
thought it %vas only on the rocks,
but when I put my hand — " and
fell back. He died without coming
to again, shortly before the dawn
of Chronos' furious miniscule sun.
Menken and his crew were not
thinking of Joe Vargo, when his
voice was heard on the intercom
which had been hooked up to the
loudspeaker. 'Well, I finally got
here. So let me in, but watch out
for the outer airlock panel; it's
caught on something."

They had to go through decon-
tamination all over again when he
came in, but Joe w’as the conquer-
ing hero, a Ulysses returned, and
was full of himself.

“Wilkes is dead." Menken told
him.

“Willy the Wilk? No! I don't
believe it!" said Joe Vargo, “What'd
he do? What happened?"

“We don't know. Perhaps since
you've been out and around for so
long you might have some idea.
Maybe you've seen something?"

Joe Vargo never once looked to-
ward the cot where Wilkes' body
was lying. Instead he looked down
at his own feet.

“Somebody," he said, “or some-
thing — I wouldn't know which —
tied my shoelaces together. So I
kept falling down. I got here
though." He looked around for ap-
proval. Menken drew him aside.

“I can't blame you for what's
happened to Wilkes, Joe, but why
is it always at a time like this you
pull something? It looks lousy to
the rest of the men, and you and I
being old friends makes it tliat
much worse. What's all this crap
about your shoelaces?? Before Joe
could answer, one of the M.D.s
said, “I think we ought to do an
autopsy. Doctor Menken. The
symptoms are . • • Well, we
don't quite know • . ."

“All right, go to it." Menken
turned to Joe Vargo again. “What
held you up so long after you were
in contact?"

“Well, as I say, I kept falling
over. Something was holding my
feet back, like when you try to
walk fast in water. I couldn't see
anything, except my boots are wet
right up to the knee, and it's as dry
as a desert around here. Finally
when the sun went down there
was a hell of a big moon coming
up opposite, and I saw I w^as leav-

70

iiig a trail as if a thread was at-
tached to my foot and was drag-
ging through the sand. I got a fun-
ny feeling. I bent down and felt it.
Then I tried to snap it off. This
thread s so damned thin you could-
n’t see it but it wouldn’t break; it
just cut into my hand. Then I
tried kicking loose, and both boots
up to the knee seemed to tighten
up. I got scared there for a minute.
So I spat on my hands; they were
pretty sweaty anyway, and I’d tak-
en the gloves off, and gave another
yank, and the damned thing just
came apart. The loose end snaked
back across the landscape and its
trail disappeared over the hill!
Boy! Then my boots gave a hell of
a squeeze and I passed out. When
I came to I couldn’t move my legs
and I thought the circulation was
stopped for keeps, but my boots
were loose again and after I rubbed
my legs they were O.K. Jesus,
some pins-and-needles. These
boots are getting a trifle snug
again, but I guess it’s just the
leather’s shrunk. Do I rate a drink,
John?”

‘There’s a botde in my cabin in
the locker. I don’t know what to
think about this rigmarole: it may
be connected with what happened
to Wilkes, or it may not, but I wish
to God you’d stay put.”

Vargo shrugged and replied,
“Well, if I had you wouldn’t have
noticed the airlock was open.”

Menken said, “That reminds
me. Say, did anybody see what the

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

airlock was caught on?” No one an-
swered. “Well, how is it now?”
Two crew members left and came
back shortly looking puzzled.

“The pressure valve showed a
small leak, sir. We can’t seem to
get it tight.”

“For Pete’s sake,” said Menken.
He went to the airlock and pressed
the controls. His eye was on the
edge of the panel at the bottom.
He pressed again and the panel
opened and closed, but not quite
all tlie way. “Bring me a flash,” he
said and turned off tlie airlock
lights. With the flash he shone a
beam horizontally at floor level.
Stretching in a nearly straight line
to the entrance of the ward-room
was an almost invisible thread that
showed like a spider’s web against
the dark background.

Menken called out loudly, “Ev-
erybody get away from Wilkes’
body! Stand back as far as you
can!” He opened a wall locker and
took out a small, exceedingly
sharp hand-hatchet. “Vargo! Come
here on the double! Somebody get
me a block of hard-wood . . .
Cook, get your cutting board.”

When the board came he lifted
the thread and slid the board un-
der it. The thread had a feeling of
somehow live tension, as though a
man was holding the end of it. He
swung the hatchet with all his
force and the maple board split
into two pieces, but the thread
still lay intact across the floor-
plates.

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

71

"Holy cowr’

Joe Vargo said, "Let me get a
blow-torch, Doc.”

"All right.” In a few minutes
the steel plates under the thread
were glowing bright orange, but
the thread remained: glowing too,
when the flame was on it.

"Try whacking it again while
it's hot,” said Joe.

"All right.” Menken swung
again, but with no result except to
mar the floor plates and blunt the
hatchet. He straightened up look-
ing confused and worried. "Spit?”
he said, "I wonder . . .” He leant
over again and spat carefully onto
the gleaming thread. It instantly
disintegrated, the ends snapping
back in opposite directions. The
body on the ward-room table
twitched and contorted oddly, and
then relaxed. The airlock clicked
into place.

"My God! Look at that!” Men-
ken said, "I guess you can go on
with the autopsy now; and ti7 and
get a sample of that stuff for an-
alysis.”

One of the younger medics said,
"We were just going to tell you,
sir: he died from internal hemor-
rhages, dozens of them! He's cut to
pieces inside.” There was a long
silence. The director w^alkcd over
to the body and looked down at it.
It was as though Wilkes had been
invaded by driver ants. . . .

After several hour’s work with
microscope and reagents, O’Neil
and his chemists and assistant bi-

ologists made their hesitant and
much qualified report. "We can’t
say for sure, but it seems to be a
life-fo^m all naht, except its ap-
parently a silicon colloid ... no
carbon. Also there’s no cellular
structures it’s more like a liquid
crystal. The molecular set-up must
be something on the order of a
polymer to explain that tensile
strength. As to spit . . . well, we
can only guess. It’s breaking up
fast spontaneously now, but or-
ganic acids seem to speed up the
process even more, and saliva is
mildly acid. So was the sweat on
Vargo’s hands.”

Menken looked exasperated.
"We can’t go around spitting on
the damned stuff — we’d run out
of spit! Organic acids, eh? Cook,
how about orange juice, lemon
juice, or maybe vinegar?” The
cook shook his head.

"All out, except a third of a bot-
tle of wine vinegar.”

"Well, can’t you chemists come
up with something?”

The ship lurched very slightly.
A man standing next to one of the
viewing ports gasped.

"My God, sir! Look!’^

In the brilliant light outside
they could see extending up to the
ship from the distance a broad
flat shining band, a yard wide or
more, lying on the sandy ground.
WTiere it met the base of tfie ship
it had bunched together into a
glistening mass that wrapped
about one of their fins, and as tliev

72

watched the fin began gradually
to buckle.

'‘Stations, everybody!” Menken
shouted. “Vargo, get set to blast
off!” The ship rocked again ver\^
slightly and a creaking sound
came from under the flooring.

"All right, give it all you’ve got,
Joe! Let her have it!”

The jets roared and then
screamed, and the ship rose into
the air grudgingly and then paused
with a heaving motion like a fish-
ing float.

"Put it on over-drive!”

"We can’t, we’re right on the
planet! The gravity II . . .”

"The hell with that: "We’re los-
ing a fin. That damned thing will
cut right through the ship. Hold
on everyone, we’ve got to chance
it.”

There was a sudden silence and
a spine-shattering jolt, and the
ship broke loose and roared into
space.

Menken reported back to Earth
in person. He felt he could best
explain what had happened face to
face. The rest of the crew stayed
on an unpopular, higher gravity
planet called Sinon, and played
rummy with stone arms and cards
of lead. All except Joe Vargo.
Somehow he managed to go back
with Menken — he had sick head-
aches, he needed a rest, his leg
still hurt him, he had to see his
girl, he had to see a man about a
dog. This was greatly resented by

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

the crew, and Menken was an-
noyed, mostly at himself.

"I don’t know why I let you do
this to me, Joe,” he told him, "but
I’ll tell you this — we’re undoubt-
edly going to be sent back with a
lot of fancy special equipment and
I’ll have to go; the rest will be vol-
unteers . . . except. I’m not
granting you tliis leave unless you
agree now to come on the return
trip. You’re a thorn in my side, but
you’re the only over-drive naviga-
tor I trust.”

The special equipment included
among other things spray-guns
and an assortment of organic com-
pounds ranging from glacial acetic
to some newly synthesised enzymes
that could digest a billiard ball in
two minutes. Also some excep-
tionally strong metallic suits of
armor, in which Joe Vargo put lit-
tle faith.

"It’ll squeeze ’em flat like a pa-
per carton. You mark my words,
John.”

The Second Expedition took the
extra precaution of making a land-
ing near one of the poles at about
80 degrees latitude. The axis of
Chronos had no tilt, so it was nei-
ther winter nor summer, but the
ground was covered with snow
through which poked occasional
reddish fuzzy plants, and the air
was bitter cold. It was hoped that
since It was evidently unaffected
by heat, it might be found only in
the warmer climates. Within two
days that theory was disproved.

73

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

The entire personnel had vol-
unteered for the second expedi-
tion. Wilkes' place as biology head
being taken by a small intense
man from the Warsaw Institute of
Science called Steinmann, and it
had been his idea to land in a cold
region of Chronos. “Life of any
conceivable kind must have some
relationship to heat," he said, “so
there is at least a minimal chance
we should not find it in a frigid
area." The others agreed, except
Joe Vargo.

“Baloney," he said; and as it
turned out he was right. The oth-
ers were more irked at this than
they were made apprehensive by
the discovery of It in their vicin-
ity. By noon of the second thirty-
one hour day, CNeil's crew had
located the desired ore; apparent-
ly at a not impractical depth, and
preparations were being made for
mining it. The extraction would
be done on the spot with a small
atomic pile and they hoped to be
able to leave with their pay-load
in a few weeks.

Joe Vargo and a mechanic were
making minor repairs to the jet
mechanism when word came that
It had been seen. Two of ©’Neil's
crew had gone with a geiger coun-
ter over a barren wind-cleared
highland and found themselves in
sight of the sea. It was flecked with
patches of ice, on the largest of
which tliey could make out the in-
distinct forms of animals that
seemed to be fishing smaller ones

out of the water; not, it would ap-
pear, with humane intentions.
Suddenly one of the men grabbed
the other’s arm.

“My God!" he whispered. “Look
at that — over there!" He pointed at
what appeared to be a patch of
still water, oval-shaped and shin-
ing in the sunlight on the beach.
It was about a hundred feet across.
One of the icefloes with a few of
the fishing animals on it had drift-
ed near to the shore, and as the
men watched, a glistening arm,
transparent and aquamarine-col-
ored, shot out from the oval patch
and came down on the nearest
animal. The others instantly slid
into the sea and swam aw^ay. The
one that was caught, enveloped as
if by aspic, struggled frantically.
In a few minutes it ceased to
move, became misshapen and
gradually smaller. Then it was no
longer visible, and the arm was
drawn back.

One of the men pressed his in-
tercom button and began to make
a report back to base; the other
watched him, not wanting to look
at the horror on the beach below.
Neither of them saw a thin fila-
ment extending itself rapidly up
the escarpment towards them,
leaving a wake of miniature snow-
flurries. The man making the re-
port, his eyes on his companion’s,
saw him suddenly start and look
at his feet.

The rest of the report was gar-
bled and hysterical, and pieced to-

74

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

gether afterwards with difficulty.
The geiger counter was found lat-
er, twisted out of shape. The two
men were not found, but the metal
parts of their suits and gear were
strewn all the way down to the
beach. There was no sign of the
oval patch.

That evening Menken held a
council.

‘Tve half a mind to pull up
stakes now,'* he said, *1>efore any-
one else gets hurt or It gets to the
ship."

O'Neil said, 'We haven't tried
the sprays yet. I'd hate to leave all
that ore just when we've found it.
Why don't we at least try them
before we quit?"

Steinmann jumped up and said,
“Also it has perhaps a nucleus; we
could try for the nucleus. I think
that—"

Joe Vargo interrupted him.
“No cells: no nucleus. It's all one
continuous piece of jello, and if it
thinks, it thinks like a bee-hive. If
it thinks."

Menken put a watch of twelve
men around the ship that night,
with himself in command. They
were armed with spray guns and
dressed in the new armor. The
mining base was left unguarded,
for, as Steinmann suggest^, since
the organism seemed to go only
for living things, and only animals
at that, it would probably ignore a
pile of untenanted machinery. The
interminable night — fifteen and a
half hours — finally came to an

end. The dawn was brilliant, col-
orless and abrupt, more like the
reappearance of the sun after a
total eclipse. There had been no
signs of It, and there were no marks
in the snow.

Menken, issuing the order of
the day, said, “There will be a spe-
cial guard of eight wearing the
armor, but I want every man to
carry a spray gun. Doctor Stein-
mann has prepared a mixture of
several of the organic sprays that
he feels is our best bet. . . ."

When the mining party with
guard got to their destination they
saw that during the night they had
been outgeneralled. The installa-
tion was entirely surrounded by an
aquamarine moat. Evidently, It
could think.

They came to a confused halt.

“Everyone start collecting spit,"
said Joe Vargo. No one laughed.
At Menken's order they backed
out of sight of the menace.

“Doctor Steinmann," Menken
said, “I would like you to give me
your private and honest opinion of
the sprays. Now that you've finally
seen the beast, and from what
we've told you, how much reli-
ance do you think we may put in
the mixture?" Steinmann started
to rise so he could see the mine-
head again. Menken said, “I don't
think I would do that. Doctor, if I
were you." Steinmann sat back.

'Tou are probably right. Doc-
tor," he said. “But it wo^d not be
my visibility but my heat that it

75

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

would be aware of. Without a lens
it can have no sense of a light-
image; on the other hand with
radiant heat, like the pit-viper, it
can tell where I am. With such a
body it cannot have a lens for the
eye, but heat it can perhaps feel
and determine direction.'*

‘Without meaning to be rude,**
said Joe Vargo, “why couldn’t it
just as well be vibrations? When I
got close to it that first time I had
on my protective suit, and those
suits are a hundred-percent in-
sulated.”

Tlie little biologist smiled and
said, “Very right, my dear young
man. The two often go together:
the sense of heat and the aware-
ness of motion. Our exploration of
many planets has shown us that,
particularly the ones that have no
light and are heated from the in-
terior. The question of light per-
ception is something else.”

Joe Vargo sneered slightly. “I
have been given to understand
that radiant heat was a form of
light,” he said.

“A difference of degree is the
important factor,** replied Stein-
mann.

Menken said, “I think the best
thing is for me to go over there
with a spray gun and see what I
can do, but I’d like to have one or
two of you come up behind and
give me cover. Also I’d like to hear
Steinmann’s opinion of this ma-
neuver.”

“My curiosity will not allow me

to stay behind. Doctor,” said Stein-
mann. “Furthermore I would like
to see for myself if there is, as our
friend says, truly no nucleus. I
have always felt that no matter
how cruel and unfamiliar a living
thing may seem, it has a nucleus
that can be reached.” He smiled
at Joe Vargo in an entirely friend-
ly way.

Menken spearheaded the small
group; the rest watched with their
eyes just above the view-point.
The organism remained where it
was, placid but ominous. Men-
ken was in front, his spray gun
held in shaking hands. When they
got to within a few yards, the
moat thinned out and on both
sides of them aquamarine-colored
lines suddenly and frighteningly
extended themselves backward to-
ward their rear. At the sight of
this, the rearguard crew streamed
out from their position, spray guns
ready, to prevent the encirclement
that threatened Menken and his
group.

“Keep it close, damn it!” Men-
ken shouted. “String out behind in
a tight double line facing out.
Don’t let yourselves get cut off!’*

“Doctor,” said Steinmann, “I
think a little spray?”

Menken went almost to the
edge of the nearest line and pushed
the plunger of his spray gun. In
front of him, stretching sideways
from left to right over the snow
was It’s forefront. It was alive and
It moved back from his foot, but

76

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

It also moved forward with a
questing pseudopod tliat waved
searching and uncertain in the
air at about the level of his waist.
The part that was reached by the
spray steamed slightly and disap-
peared. Nearby parts took its
place and c^ept fonvard. He
squirted at it again : part of it dis-
solved and the rest pulled back.
He pushed almost madly at the
plunger, and a larger and larger
circle of withdrawal appeared, but
he could see that beyond the reach
of the acid It was forming itself
into a ridge. Then this became a
heavy, wide band which came up
like a wave and enveloped a man
over to his right. Menken could
see that the unfortunate man's
spray gun was somehow separated
from him, and was held in a
vacuole in which it was quickly
transferred to the surface of the
organism, whereupon it was eject-
ed. Menken was too intent on sav-
ing himself to watch the dreadful
transformation the man under-
went.

“Back, everybody! Get back!"
Then, as he turned to run, he saw
the moat no longer lay in a con-
tinuous circle about the mine
head, and Joe Vargo, taking ad-
vantage of this, had reached and
climbed up to a part of the hous-
ing that contained the atomic pile.
The double line of men, Menken
at their rear, were making their
way back as rapidly as they could,
pumping a constant stream from

their sprays on either side to keep
from being hemmed in. But the
two flanks of the organism that
formed a long U were outdistanc-
ing them. The ones in the lead be-
gan to run, some abandoning their
sprays; Vargo thought they might
make it. . . .

So far. It had not seemed to be
aware of Joe Vargo’s proximity. He
began frantically to remove the
lead shielding from one side of the
pile. Then he started the device.
It was on a heavy, wheeled dolly,
that enabled him to turn it like a
searchlight, and where the radio-
active beam fell. It split into blobs
like spilled mercury. These were
from a foot to a yard across and
moved much more rapidly than
the main mass. He swung the pile
slowly in a circle, and the ground
about the mine became dotted
with the blobs. Finally he concen-
trated his aim in the direction op-
ix)site to that taken by Menken
and the rest of tlie crew. He could
see now that most if not all of the
men were entirely surrounded by
tlie parent body of the organism
which had remained unaffected
by the radioactivity. He turned off
the pile and took a deep breath,
and ran through the lane left by
the retreating blobs. Unlike mer-
cury, these did not join together
again. One of them bounced into
his path and he leaped over it and
ran on, but in a moment became
aware of something that im-
peded the motion of his legs. He

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

77

stopped for an instant and squirt-
ed acid and enzymes; the feeling
of tightness was gone, and he ran
on again.

After a while he stopped, out of
breath. The blobs were no longer
in sight, and in a wide semicircle
he cautiously made his way back
to the ship. There were no signs of
life and none of the crew had re-
turned. He climbed the ladder to
the air lock which, in spite of the
cold, had been left open — the at-
mosphere now being known to be
breathable — and shut it. Turning
up the heat, he went to a locker
and took out a bottle and drank
from it. Then he went to a view-
ing port and looked in the direc-
tion of the mine.

Coming toward him across the
snow he saw a small desperately
running figure that stumbled from
time to time and almost fell. As it
approached the ship he saw it was
Steinmann, and he hurried to the
air lock and opened it.

‘‘Help! For the love of God,
bring your spray!”

Joe Vargo now saw that a thin
line ran back in the snow from
Steinmann s legs. He picked up
his spray gun and shook it: almost
empty. . . .

“Sorry,” he said, “can't take a
chance.”

He pressed the air lock controls
again.

Back in the navigator’s chair he
pulled a lever and the jets roared.
Being almost directly under the

ship, Steinmann instantly became
a Rowing mass of charcoal. . . •

An hour later, with Chronos at
a safe distance, Joe Vargo tight-
ened the safety straps and put the
ship on over-drive. When his body
was adjusted to its effects, he un-
fastened himself and went to the
galley to make some coffee. When
he got to the door his blood turned
to ice: lying in the corner of the
galley floor was a twenty-inch
aquamarine puddle.

The combination of over-drive
and inertia-moderator gives a
gravitational pull towards the deck
plates of about a quarter G, so that
the thing was lying — not, thank
God, floating about in free-fall.
How on earth had it got there? It
must have a diabolical intelligence
of its own. He slammed the door
and ran for his almost exhausted
spray gun. He remembered what
Steinmann had said about heat,
and hurriedly put on an insulated
suit and snapped the helmet shut.
It was no protection, but with his
own radiant heat blanketed, and if
he went on tip-toe. . . ?

He went back to the galley and
eased the door open. The thing
had not moved. Standing on a
shelf immediately beyond it was a
large bottle of vinegar. Transfer-
ring the spray gun to his left hand,
Joe Vargo reached over and picked
up a spoon from a box next to him,
and threw it onto the floor on the
other side of the galley. A pseu-
dopod formed and explored the

78

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

spoon, but drew back again. It was
not to be fooled that way . . .

Then he saw, just barely visible,
several hair-like processes rise into
tlie ah* and start waving about.
One of them touched his arm and
the rest at once settled on him,
fastening about arms and legs. He
turned tlie spray on tlicm and they
disappeared, but the gun ran dry
almost before he could free him-
self. Perhaps he could shut It in:
the door seemed to fit tighdy, but
he realized that witli the tiling in
possession of the galley he would
starve to death in the months it
would take to get back to Eartli,
and Joe Vargo was determined to
get back to Earth.

It put out no more hair-like fila-
ments: It seemed to be consider-
ing. If he could only get at the
vinegar. How could he lure it
away without endangering him-
self? He looked around despair-
ingly and his eye caught sight of
die electric toaster. An idea came
to him. The toaster w^as switched
off but he saw that the long exten-
sion cord w^as connected to the
W’all-socket. Very carefidly he
reached for it and turned it on.
Then he put it gendy on the floor
and tip-toed to one side. The wires
began to glow and with a trium-
phant lurch the organism envel-
oped it. There was a dim flash
as the toaster w^as crushed and
short-circuited, and the galley
lights went out, but in the light
that came through the door Joe

Vargo saw the thing pull back
again: It didn’t seem to like the
toaster, or maybe it was the shock.
An>"way, he had the vinegar now.

He unscrewed the cap and
poured the contents slowly onto
the floor, and as the acid reached
it, the edges of the blob hissed and
it withdrew into itself. It backed
into a comer before the advancing
liquid and tried to flow up the side
of the metal w^alls, but it found no
purchase. Pseudopods waved
about, but Joe Vargo splashed vin-
egar on them and they vanished.
TTien the bottle was empty, but the
thing by this time was no bigger
than a saucer, and as the vinegar
spread over the floor, hissed and
disappeared.

Five months later Joe Vargo
could read by the light of the ap-
proaching Sun, and he turned ofiE
the over-drive. In another week he
coasted into the Earth’s atmos-
phere and began to make prepara-
tions for a landing.

Home, at last!

After making some observations
on ground-points, he realized that
witli luck he could make his land-
ing on the field nearest to his
home-town: New York. But at
this point Joe Vargo’s luck ran out.
The jets, the fonvard ones that
acted as breaks, would not go on,
and he remembered too late the
interrupted repairs tliat he and the
mechanic had been making.

The ship w as aimed right, how-

79

THE HOMING INSTINCT OF JOE VARGO

ever, and he would have to take a
chance with a parachute. But he
must somehow slow up, otherwise
he would be knocked to pieces by
the air, and the outer skin of the
ship was already glowing red from
the terrific friction.

He dashed to the inertia-mod-
erator and began rapidly to un-
fasten it from its base. If he could
turn it on its side he might be able
to turn the ship with it.

As the lights of New York be-
gan to show on the horizon, he
switched on the current and the
ship slowly turned in her course,
end over end. Then he started the
drive-jets and was flattened on the
floor as the ship decelerated. When
the ship had reduced its speed to
a bearable point, he stopped the
jets and looked out of a view-port,
and saw that he was going to over-
shoot his mark. Quickly he put on
a parachute suit, and went to the
air lock. The ship w^ould fall into
the Atlantic, as they were travel-
ling eastward, but he thought he
might be able to land inland. He
pressed the controls and the panel
opened, but he was pinned like a
piece of paper against the side by
the stream of air. He exerted all
his strength and managed at last
to struggle over the edge, and was
whipped away in an instant. The
parachute opened with a bang
and the elastic supporting lines
stretched out: he felt as though he
had broken in two. Then as he
stopped swinging and began to

float gently down, he saw the wa-
ters of the Lower Bay beneath
him, and saw too that he was
travelling rapidly out to sea. Joe
Vargo could not swim, but as he
drifted lower he saw that he was
very likely going to make it after
all. Directly in his path lay a small
island, from the center of which
stuck up a rusty iron tower.

A few minutes later he landed
on the edge of that island. When
he had stripped off the parachute,
he searched, with increasing anx-
iety, by the light of his flash, until,
tripping over a piece of wood, he
dropped it and broke the bulb. He
had no matches, but he had had
time enough to find out that the
island had long since been aban-
doned, and that there was no wa-
ter except for the sea lapping
against the concrete bulkheads.

When dawn came, he climbed
the tower and looked about. Noth-
ing was in sight but water.

A plane passed high over his
head and he waved, but realized
that he was completely invisible to
them. He thought of waving his
shirt, but remembered that it, like
all his clothes, was dark grey.

He watched all day as he grew
thirstier and less and less hopeful,
but no vessel came in sight; only an
occasional far-off plane. When
night fell he saw the distant glow
of the city. He looked up and made
out the white pin-point of light
that was Chronos's sun . . .

Joe Vargo was home.

Though Jane Rice was raised in Kentucky, the southern hill
family hilariously portrayed on the following pages is not
modeled after real people— living, dead, or fictional. The pot
of gold at the end of the rainbow is, of course, actual, and
this is the truth about how it may be trapped.

THE RAINBOW GOLD

by Jaue Rice

Fll bet you grandMa knows
more interesting things than any-
body. She don’t say much — un-
less she’s got something important
to say, and maybe not tlien if it
don’t suit her to. But what she
does say is generally surprising.

If it was somebody besides
grandMa who told me tlicre was a
pot of gold at the end of every
rainbow^ I’d think pshaw. Grand-
Ma don’t spool a lot tliougli. And I
could tell she w'asn’t joshing me
about the pot of rainbow gold be-
cause I could sec it grow in her
eyes from a tiny speck to a black,
two-handle, tlirce-leg pot with a
mound of gold in it. Me and her
are tlie only folks in the family
whose eyes can do tliat. And we
can just do it to each other.

After that, seemed to me like
forever before we had us a storm
w’ith a rainbow attached to it.
Then, one day nigh on to noon
dinner when I w^as playing char-
iot with the stone boat hitched to

the jenny mule, a pour come quick
from over the otlier side of the
mountain. Quick as it come, it was
past us and gone. The sun snuck
out from behind a pearly cloud
and, while the last drops w^as stiU
splashing plink-plop, lo and be-
hold a rainbow commenced shap-
ening with its end bending into
Possum Hollow.

I drew^ a bead on it, lining it up
between two tall fatwood trees,
and let out for the Hollow. I wTnt
like a swarm. I don’t believe I
touched ground except on the high
spots.

If I live to be as old as the
mountain I won’t forget when I
skimmed over a rise and caught
sight of the Hollow — full of light,
like a magic thing. My! It was a
glory to sec.

I never known what a purely
magniferous thing a rainbow was,
near up, until I seen that one
arching tlirough the dripping
branches into the glade. There was

SO

THE RAINBOW GOLD

81

colors in it that there’s not any
such colors. And all the little dia-
mond raindrops falling brilliant
so that the whole Hollow glittered
and glistened and winked and
twinkled with a million, skillion
rainbow dazzles — and the chunk
of solid gold in the black two-
handle, three-leg pot at the rain-
bow’s end was the gleamingest,
glowingest, goldest gold you could
imagine. And then some. It was so
gold it made you squinch.

I reckon it was lucky I was trav-
eling too swift to pull up, or Td
probably have halted struck in my
tracks. As it was, I went scudding
down into the Hollow like a run-
away wagon and would’ve shot on
through and up the far side if I
hadn’t stretched and caught hold
of a sycamore limb. I spun clean
around it twice before I got slowed
sufficient to let loose and, then,
for a spell, I just leaned, bug-eyed
and whopper-jawed, against the
tree trunk, getting my wind back.
And gawking at how everything
was.

When I collected myself, I tip-
toed to the pot of gold — though I
don’t know why I tiptoed, unless I
figured I was dreaming and didn’t
want to wake myself up. I heaved
and I hove, but I couldn't budge it.
It weighed that heavy.

GrandMa hadn’t mentioned
what took place when the rain-
bow begun fading, but it stood to
reason the gold disappeared if it
wasn't separated from the source

someway. Otherwise, there'd be
pots of it from away back to Crea-
tion scattered thick as butternuts
on the mountain, and if that was
the case why hadn’t us Pirtles ever
found us a pot of it?

So, I sat on it.

It didn’t enter my head I might
vanish, or I wouldn’t have been so
spry to do it. As it turned out, I
didn’t vanish — but, later, when
Easter asked me, ‘‘Why don't rain-
bows disappear people?” I got to
studying on what could’ve hap-
pened to me and I fell kerplunk off
the ceiling, where I was walking
upside down to show Sukey how
flies did it, and knocked out two
teeth — one of mine, and one of
Boo Baby's.

Anyway, like I said, I spread out
and settled down on top of the
gold to protect it and if there's any-
thing more heart beating than sit-
ting on a pot of gold, swinging
your heels and gazing up into a
rainbow, I don't know what it is.
My! You wouldn’t ever get looked
out.

In awhile, that rainbow started
fading until, without being able to
say exactly when, it wasn't there
anymore and the Hollow was back
to usual and I'd have thought the
whole shebang was a fancy if it
hadn’t been for the pot of gold.
But, when I eased up and peeked,
there it was — yellow as butter and
bright as fireworks in the big black
pot. And I took oflF like a frog on a
hot skillet and headed for home.

82

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

I was going at such a clip when I
whished through the yard that
nothing had a chance to get out of
the way. I managed to steer clear
of the jenny mule hitched to the
stone boat but I fetched up in the
kitchen, where everybody was fix-
ing to eat, with chickens plastered
all over me and Pconia's pet squir-
rel hanging on for dear life.

Ma said, ‘That's not how you
was taught to come to die table.
S\vitch yourself around and sashay
in mannerly, the same as you was
learned."

Peonia said, “That's not how
to treat my squirrel neither. You
give it here."

I said, “Ifoundusapotofgoldat-
theendoftherainbowl

Pa said, shooing a chicken ofiE
him, “Pay attention to your Ma.
Nimble out, and mosey in proper.
And simmer down. You sound like
a Spring freshet."

I said, “But PA I foundusapot-
of goldin PossumHollow I "

Pa said, “And tiikc your foot out
of the lard bucket."

GrandPa cupjx^d his best ear
with his hand and said, “Heh?"

Sukey said, “PA SAID FOR
HIM TO TAKE HIS FOOT
OUT OF THE LARD BUCK-
ET.*^

GrandPa said, “That's funny. It
feels like Tuesday to me. And you
don't need to louden. I can hear."

Luke said, “It feels like Tues-
day to me, too." And Duke said,
“It is Tuesday. This time last

month it was Saturday, so that
makes today Tuesday. Next month
tliis time itll be Friday."

Peonia said, “Ma, make Little
Joe give me my squirrel. Lookit
how he's wearing it, like a scrap."

Easter said, admiring me,
“How'd you get so many different
shades? Did you do it on purpose?
Can anybody do it? Would you
show me how?" And, to ever}^body
else, “Don't he look scrumptious?"

Ma said, jouncing Boo Baby
who'd swallowed something, “In a
way. In another way, he looks a
mite peculiar." She cocked her
head at me. “Son, do you feel
normal?"

GrandPa said, “Pass the \dtdes.
As far as it concerns me, that there
potfull of gold Little Joe found
can wait in Possum Hollow until
IVc ate."

Pa said, “A pot of what in Pos-
sum Hollow?"

“Gold, grandPa says," Luke and
Duke answered him. They handed
grandPa the hominy.

“How come you to know,
grandPa?" Easter said.

GrandPa said, “Heh?"

Peonia said, prying her squirrel
loose from me and cuddling it,
“EASTER SAID HOW'D YOU
KNOW?"

GrandPa said, “The boy said so,
that's how. Twice," he added,
helping himself to hominy. “As
anybody who wasn't deaf could
plainly hear."

Pa said, “A pot of gold?*'

THE RAINBOW GOLD

83

'Tessir/' I said, circling my
arms to demonstrate how enormous
it was. '‘It*s — ’’ but that was the
furthercst I got because he was up,
and away, and gone, yelling
COME ON. And the rest of us,
like always, picked up and took off
and followed fast. Luke and Duke,
running free, passed him once
but they was so excited they got
careless and lost the front spot
when they tried to go by opposite
sides of a persimmon tree. Grand-
Pa got the notion it was the battle
of Missionary Ridge and gradually
took the lead — running free and
easy like a boy and giving the
rebel yell, and grandMa brought
up the rear on the stone boat
hitched to the jenny mule.

The lard bucket hampered my
gait somewhat but tlie idea that
maybe I had fancied the w^hole
business hastened me a notch, so I
averaged out fairly equal. I was
mighty relieved when I seen the
gold in the pot, same as Fd said it
was.

My! We certainly had us a mer-
riment there in the glade. Til bet
you there's echoes echoing yet,
here, there, and yonder, through
the mountain. Even grandMa
hopped off the stone boat to cut a
caper with grand Pa who now
had the notion the Civil War was
over and that, this time, the South
had won it.

Shortly, we quietened down
and begun pondering on how to
get our fortune home. Pa, strong as

he is, couldn’t but barely heft it
with Luke and Duke helping him,
and from the Hollow to the house
was a long piece and hill the whole
distance.

Easter said to me, ''Could you
witch It?”

I shook my head. The only
things I can witch, besides water,
is owls and crossing-places. I don't
know why I can't witch nothing
but water, owls, and crossing-
places. I just can't, that’s all —
anymore than Easter can talk
without making a question, or
Sukey can make herself seen to
anybody looking straight at her.

GrandMa said, more like she
was thinking out loud than speak-
ing to us, "You get two wishes on a
pot of rainbow gold. You could use
up a wish.”

Easter said, "Don't wishes come
in threes?”

GrandMa said, "That's an old
wives' talc, sugar. Wishes come in
twos and fours. Rainbow gold is a
hvo-wish thing.”

Pa said, "No point in wasting a
wish, if we don't have to.”

I said, "You reckon if we got it
on the stone boat the jenny mule
might haul it?”

"She might,” Pa said. He
stroked his chin and considered.
'Tep,” he said, sizing up the pot
of gold, and the stone boat, and
tlie jenny mule. "I declare I
do think she might. Provided
she had a dose of seasoning
juice to aid her.” He wiped away a

84

smile, sort of guilty-like, recoUect-
ting the day he'd given her a doc-
toring of seasoning juice to perk
her up from feeling poorly.

Ma said, addressing Pa by his
complete name, “Oh, Eph Pirtle!'*
Like you'd say, “Lord have mercy!"

Pa said, “Now temper down.
Firstly," he said, holding up a
thumb and finger and ticking
them ofiF, “I said a dose of season-
ing juice. Not a fill of it. And,
tliirdly, leave the rest to me." He
spit clean across the Hollow, and
stood rocking back and forth and
popping his galluses.

“What happened to secondly?"
Easter wanted to know.

GrandPa said, “Heh?"

Sukey said, EASTER SAID
WHAT HAPPENED TO SEC-
ONDLY?"

“How should I know?" grandPa
snorted. “He wasn't in my regi-
ment."

Ma said, 'Tou plan to go on
that stone boat ride, don't you,
Eph?"

Pa said, “Yep." And, to Easter,
“That's secondly." And, to me,
“Take your foot out of the lard
bucket and sling it here."

Ma said, “Eph, mark my
words, one of tliese days your tom-
foolishness is going to backfire and
no mistake. Ain't you ever going
to quit pranking with Provi-
dence?"

Pa said, virtuous, “I never
pranked with Providence in my
entire life."

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

"Is — that — so," Ma said. "How
about at the Reunion when you
set off the dynamite and sent four-
teen hounds, twelve pies, nine
watermelons, three cousins, and a
kettle of burgoo flying turn-turtle
clear across the yard. And the time
you invented the jumping shoes
out of bedsprings and gun pow-
der and didn't get teetotally un-
twisted for a month. And it wasn't
but a week ago you tried to hypno-
tize a live bear and — "

“There wasn't a lick of sense in
trying to hypnotize a dead bear,"
Pa interrupted. And, before Ma
could speak, “As for this here pro-
ceedings, I'll bet you it don't back-
fire. Anything you care to men-
tion. Go ahead."

Ma said, “You mean it?”

Pa said, expansive, 'Tep."

Ma thought, and said, “A slim-
handle curl-fingered back-scratch-
er to hang on the wall with a rib-
bon, like cousin Tilly's. No," she
said, changing her mind, “I'll
take a looking box. It prettys a
room better.

“A looking box," she repeated,
seeing it to herself — raisined with
twinkly bits of glass and shining
like a vision. “No," she said. “Let
me think. Anything I want, you
say? Anything?"

Pa bowed real elegant, pretend-
ing he had a plume in his hat.
“Anything your heart desires," he
said. “You name it."

“Regardless?" Ma asked him.
“Promise. No matter what."

THE RAINBOW GOLD

85

‘1 promise/' Pa said, genial.
"'Choose. Times a-wasting."

"I choose you should take us all
on a trip into Toicn/* Ma said.
Just like that!

Well, I don't know who of us
was the most thunderstruck.
Toivn, I know about Town. We
all did, on account of as how
cousin Tilly was eternally putting
on airs about the time she’d been,
and what-all she'd seen, and done,
and ate, and so on. But I'd never
counted on seeing Town my very
own self. From what I'd heard
cousin Tilly tell, it was hard to be-
lieve . . . one crossing-place aft-
er another. And in the very mid-
dle was a circle where a fellow,
like me, could practice witching
from umpteen crisscross directions
at once, and not use up half the
combinations.

**Tcnvnr Pa said, in a voice like
he’d stepped on a cottonmouth
snake.

“You promised,” Ma said, firm.

Townr

''Town?'" Easter said. “Gee, can
wc eat in a calfeteria, like cousin
Tilly did? Can we, Pa? Can we?”

“Stores,” Peonia said, hugging
herself.

“Elevators,” Sukey said.

Luke said, “Maybe we could
buy us a auto-mobile.” And Duke
said, “And go to one of them bar-
ber’s shops.”

“A auto-mobile,” Pa said, re-
flective. And he slapped his knee.
“Agreed. A trip in to Town.”

When we'd all quit shouting
and turning somersaults and stuff.
Pa let me tote the seasoning juice
back from the Hiding Hatch be-
cause, in a way, it was my lard
bucket. I don’t know what’s in
seasoning juice, but it sure is a de-
light to slosh it. Sparkles, and whiz-
zly sizzles, and glinty tingling
bubbles, and little bright bursting
pops fizz up and, if you give the
bucket a reverse nvist, its almost
like July Fourth.

The jenny mule smelt it com-
ing and me and Sukey and Peonia
and Easter had to head her down-
wind with her nose in a damp
gunny sack while Luke and Duke
helped Pa struggle tlie pot of gold
on to the stone boat.

The stone boat is a drag on
runners, like a sled, that you pile
stones and stumps and roots on
when you're clearing a patch. Pa
had fashioned it low, so he would-
n't have to hoist any more than
need be — and built it sturdy, to
endure — and aged it in Moun-
tain Dew, to make it limber. As a
consequence, it was stout as a live
oak and whippy as a willow
switch and, as he hadn’t put it to
much service, good as new. Same
with the jenny mule's harness,
which was salt-cured rawhide
strips plaited together and rubbed
with snake oil until they was
black as sin, and strong and tough
as a wild old billygoat. Pa can't
abide to make a think slipshod.
Even if he don’t intend to use it.

86

When us children was roosted
in the trees to Ma's satisfaction.
Pa tugged his hat tight, settled his
pants, sluiced the juice around to
get it good and lively and allowed
the jenny mule at it. She drunk it
without a pause and when she was
finished she stood there, wall-eyed
and splay-legged, breathing like
she was about to shriek.

Pa took his own sweet time
getting set on the stone boat. He
can gauge a thing to a T
and shave it so fine he has you
jangling, but the jenny mule did-
n’t appear to be in a rush. She just
stood there kind of spraddled,
breathing and blowing. I’d almost
concluded either Pa had under-
calculated or the seasoning juice
was losing its strength, when she
threw back her head and brayed.
And, for a hair raising second, I
thought Pa had gone and over-
done it.

ril bet you there wasn’t a living
creature within hearing distance
that didn’t freeze shivering in its
hide to wonder what new and aw-
ful varmint was roaming the
mountain. Ma said, later, that her
spine rolled right up her back like
a fern.

The hounds, who’d been nosing
at a possum hole, bristled like por-
cupines and my dog, Chigger, the
one who can talk, said, "Je-ru^sa-
leynT and streaked for home with
the pack ki-yi-ing behind him in a
blur of tails and legs . . . and a
bluejay, fussing at us, toppled off

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

its perch, horrified, and treaded
air with its feathers everywhich-
way until its wings took hold. At
the rate It was traveling, when it
left, it arrived in Chinaland along
towards sundown.

A little blue white jaybird feath-
er floated down and, in the gath-
ering silence, Pa’s voice was posi-
tively happy, ‘"Gee-up,” he said,
snugging the pot of gold between
his knees, and slapping the jenny
mule’s rump with the lines. ''Gee
— get-tip, you ornery-natured tri-
fling slab of sidemeat. Gee-up T

The jenny mule glanced back
at Pa as if to say, ‘‘Prepare to meet
thy Maker,” and flattening her
ears she shook herself together,
haunched, straightened out, and
got navigating. There was a
whump as the stone boat begun
moving, and a whoop from Pa,
and away they went close to the
ground, going like a lit fuse and
grinning from ear to ear — him
and the jenny mule both. Up the
slope, over the rise, and out of
sight. And us after him.

We could hear him a-hooting
and urging on the jenny mule and,
now and again, we’d catch a wild,
zigzag glimpse of him zipping
through a place like a fork of
greased lightning but, mostly, he
was a terrible unseen commotion
on ahead. Once there was a slid-
dery, cracking crash and Ma
wailed, ‘‘He’s done for!” But when
we reached where it was, there sat
a black and white woods pussy

THE RAINBOW GOLD

87

square on its fanny with its hind
feet stuck out like a person’s, shak-
ing its head dazed and astonished.
And where Pa had slewed to avoid
it there was gashes and splits all
over Luke and Duke’s persimmon
tree, and his hat on a topmost
branch.

‘'Well, he ain’t killed,” Ma said,
drying her eyes on Boo Baby’s
dress and lengthening her stride,
since it’s not advisable to hesitate
in the immediate vicinity of a
woods kitty — especially one that’s
going to be violent in a mighty
few seconds.

“But he deserves killing,” she
said, listening to her chickens
squawking as he hit tlie yard. “He
ought to be skinned and sold for
a teunty,” she added, as pieces of
woodpile flew into view high in
the air, companied by a joyous
cheer from Pa.

She’d no sooner spoke when
there was a queer, curious, double
clap of noise, like twin explosions,
followed by a smash and a dull,
earth trembling thtmk. And then
quiet, except for the ruckus the
chickens was raising.

Ma, white as a spook, screamed,
“He’s a goner!”

Seemed to me it took us a year to
gain the yard, though it w^asn’t but
a matter of minutes. It w^as like
when I was a tot and tumbled in
Pantlier Creek and got caught be-
low the surface on a sunk snag. I
remember, plain as plain, how
purely dreadful it w\as — fighting to

get free, and thinking I wasn’t
ever going to see my folks again in
this world, and how nice behaved
I’d be forevermore if I could wig-
gle loose and not drown. Until I
discovered I was breathing under-
water. I remember I was so sur-
prised that I dang near did drown
from trying to reason out what
method I was using. I never have
reasoned it out, to this day. I can
just do it, someway.

Anyhow, we got there at last
. . . Ma screeching, and Sukey
bawling, and Pconia and Easter
blubbering, and Luke and Duke
and me trying not to and making
a sorry job of it.

The yard looked like it’d been
stirred with a stick and thrown up
for grabs, and leaning smiley
against the trunk of a chinaberry
was the jenny mule. A hoop off
the bashed-in rain barrel wreathed
her neck and a ribbon of smoke
curled out of her nose. Sitting on
the pot of gold was Pa, somewhat
tattered but not hurt a whit, eating
a persimmon.

He said, “Howdy.”

Without a word and in one
smooth motion, Ma put Boo Baby
down and picked up a dead pullet
and fired it at him.

Pa ducked and said, “Now,
girl. There’s no argument. You
said it’d backfire. It did, and I ad-
mit it.” He jerked a thumb at the
jenny mule. “Backfired and
sneezed. Sh;n<Zetaneous, you might
say.”

88

Ma said, 'T)on’t you *now girr
me. Look at this yard. Look at it!
Just look at it!” and she flung an-
other chicken.

Pa dodged and said, mild,
‘'Pitching the deceased poultry
around ain’t going to neaten it
none. And whats a dab of mess
when we have us a fortune to
show for it.”

Ma said, and she was riled,
"Whats the good of that gold
when you’ll have us all lifeless be-
fore we get the using of it, I wish
it was spending money and I wish
it was stashed away and I wish — ”
She stopped, her eyes as big as
pies, because the pot of gold was
gone from under Pa and he
thumped to the ground.

"The wishes,” Ma gasped. Her
fingers crept to her lips. "I used up
both the wishes,” she whispered.
She sank to a stump and put her
face in her apron and bent to and
fro.

Pa got up and comforted her.
"Why, bless Ben,” he said, patting
her, "it ain’t worth weeping
about.”

Easter said, "Shucks, Ma, whaPs
tliere so marvelous about a pot of
gold?”

I said, "It’s not like we needed
it, Ma. Gosh.”

Luke said, "Little Joe’s right,
Ma. Don’t cry. We don’t care if
it’s gone,” and Duke said, "Heck
no.”

Pconia said, "Here, Ma. You can
have my squirrel.” And Sukey

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

said, "And you can have my red
beads.”

"What’s ailing daughter?”
grandPa asked.

Sukey said, "THE POT OF
GOLD IS GONE AND
SHE FEELS BAD.”

"Well, why do she feel bad?”
"BECAUSE THE POT OF
GOLD IS GONE.”

"What’s that got to do with it?”
"SHE THINKS IT WAS HER
FAULT.”

"What was?”

GrandMa said, ‘TVever mind.
No harm done.”

"That’s what I figured,” grandPa
said.

Ma raised her face out of her
apron. "I’m not sorrovnng,” she
managed. And she wasn’t. She
was laughing fit to bust.

Pa stared at her as if she’d taken
leave of her wits and, then, he
slapped his knee and turned tail
and beat it into the house. There
was a sound from inside like a
bear clawing at a bee tree, and Ma
nearly split her sides. While us
children was blinking puzzled at
each other, Pa appeared in the
door^vay.

"It’s there!” he yelled, throwing
handfulls of green paper money in
the air. "In stacks! In the mat-
tress!”

And, of a sudden, everybody
w^as laughing, harder and harder
and harder, and harder, until we
was weak and w^obbly and flopped
in heaps.

the rainbow gold

89

So, tomorrow, we're going to
Town,

And Pa says, as an extra re-
ward, I can take Chigger along.
Chigger is so excited he keeps run-

ning in rings yelping '"My!" Me,
too.

When I think of that circle
where the crossing-places meet, I
can hardly wait.

Through Time And Space With Ferdinand Peghoot: XXI

In 3180, Ferdinand Feghoot found the planet called Pigg. It was
worthy of note, not because all its species were civilized (which is
common enough), but because the spirits of its dead remained vis-
ibly present for years, getting into the same sorts of scrapes they
had when alive. This troubled the living, who were con\dnced tliat
there was no way to help or console them.

Feghoot saw an example as he was taking a stroll with the Presi-
dent. A little ghost-cat crept up, weeping and wailing.

‘Th-th-that old gh-gh-ghost B-Boxer bit off my t-t-t-tail!" he told
them, sobbing and blowing his nose.

“Oh, dear, dear, dearT the President moaned. “And tliere's
nothing at all we can do!"

Feghoot paid no attention. Kneeling, he whispered some words.
Instantly, the cat-ghost leaped happily up, thanked him politely,
and dashed off purring a tune.

“How splendid!" the President cried. “Mr. Feghoot, what did
you say}”

“I told him to go to a grog shop."

“A grog shop, but why?"

“Because," said Ferdinand Feghoot, “that is where they retail
spirits."

— Grendel Briarton

BOOKS

Near Misses From All Over

by Damon Knight

The failure of most recent
s-f novels to say anything new
and important, or even very inter-
esting, makes a novel like Brian
W. Aldiss’s VANGUARD FROM AL-
PHA (An Ace Double, with
CHANGELING WORLDS, by Ken-
neth Bulmer, 35^), flawed as it is,
worthy of note.

Aldiss writes pointed, dry,
highly styled short stories that pack
a great deal into a small space. His
novels, those w^e have seen so far,
are pot-boilers. This one opens
with a dispirited comic-book se-
quence: three young spacemen,
all with identical clean-cut faces
and empty expressions, are sent up
to the Moon to investigate some-
thing mysterious going on near the
Rosk installation there. Fll explain
the Rosks in a moment In a
scrimmage, Tyne Leslie is knocked
out, and when he comes to, in the
spaceship on the way home, Mur-
ray Mumford tells him that he,
Murray, saved Tyne’s life after the

third man, Alan Cunliffe, pan-
icked and threatened to shoot
Murray if he didn’t leave Tyne be-
hind. Tyne refuses to believe this
story, and makes up his mind to
find out the truth.

Now. The Rosks are immigrants
from another star, vaguely Malay-
an-looking humanoids, who by
threats and diplomacy have man-
aged to get themselves allotted a
district in Sumatra, and another
on the Moon, and to become a
Rosk Problem. The exasperating
complexity of this problem, com-
pounded by stupidity, nationalist
short-sightedness and other hu-
man traits, makes it all too be-
lievable: and the ambiguity of the
Murray situation makes it equally
interesting. If Murray is not telling
the truth, what did happen on the
Moon while Tyne was uncon-
scious? And if Murray is lying,
why such a clumsy lie?

Then we get another comic-
book sequence, in which Tyne,

90

BOOKS

91

after being delayed at the space-
port, charges oflE after Murray
without stopping to tell anybody
anything; and meets a mysterious
undercover agent in a bar, and gets
knocked over the head and abduct-
ed in a taxi. . . . The rest of the
chase, which takes Tyne to Padang,
a Rosk hideout, a desert island,
and to some hair-raising cliffhang-
ers in a big automated plankton
plant, alternates more or less regu-
larly between thoughtful analysis
and pointless action.

But even in his comic-book
writing, Aldiss is more perceptive
than most. The final solution of
his puzzle is ingenious and rea-
sonably satisfying; his future world
has at least touches of reality, be-
cause it's as idiotically patched-to-
gether and complicated as our
own. And at times, Aldiss's gift
for phrasemaking triumphs over
his plot. Two samples:

'The ocean (. . .) lay there
flat as failure, stagnant and bras-
sy."

"Absolute poverty, like absolute
power, corrupts absolutely."

If this writer ever does a novel
with his right hand, it will be
something worth waiting for.

Edmund Cooper is another Brit-
ish writer whose short stories, so
far, have been more rewarding
than his novels. His latest movie,
SEED OF LIGHT (Ballantine,
350), has a fatuous plot in which
all the British statesmen are heroic

idealists and all the Americans
clowns and demagogues. The writ-
ing is gassy, with an almost in-
credible concentration of cliches
in places. For contrast. Cooper has
had the gall to interpolate this
fuggheaded screed with passages
from Ecclesiastes and Revela-
tion.

Put in charge of the first
manned satellite (for some impen-
etrably idealistic British reason), a
mystic and a Communist argue
over whether to bomb all satellite
bases, or just all but the Soviet
Union s. In the event, it doesn't
matter, because they start World
War III anyhow.

Dissolve to a generation or so
later. All that's left of Earth's hu-
man population is in a few glass-
roofed cities, all of which are now
building spaceships in a frantic ef-
fort to escape the lingering death
of the planet. (They build these
spaceships inside the city domes,
in such a way that the takeoff of
each ship will probably mean
the death of everybody left behind.
This seems pretty asinine, but let
us pass on.)

Well, these gigantic spaceships
are to support generations of trav-
elers, but the original complement
of each is to be just ten — five men,
five women. By "recycling their
biological material" over and over,
they can exist indefinitely without
further supplies of food. We fade
out on a scene from the Hollywood
version of when worlds col-

92

LiDE. Now we meet the crew of
one starship, all of whom take
silly-ass names on joining the
crew (the men take the names of
famous scientists, the women those
of cities — presumably on the the-
ory that if you ruled out courte-
sans and actresses, there wouldn't
be enough famous women to go
around), and we settle down to a
dismally uninventive rewrite of
Heinlein's universe.

All this changes radically c,
page 130, when a third-genera-
tion mutant named Kepler tries to
unite his own telepaAic powers
and those of his two wives, in an
attempt to explore the precogni-
tive memory of a newborn child —
with the object of finding out be-
forehand whether Procyon will
prove to have habitable planets,
so that if not, the expedition can
save years by turning aside earlier.
This venture and its sequel have a
Stapledonian sweep; tlie charac-
ters are as stiff and artificial as
ever, but now they have found
their milieu. Even Cooper's soggy
prose seems to take on dignity.
From here until tlie end, the book
holds up beautifully; the closing
chapter is a little sticky, but not
enough to matter.

THE WORLD THAT COULDN't

BE, edited by H. L. Gold (Dou-
bleday, $3.95) contains at least
two stories that ought to be re-
quired reading for s-f fans: "A

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Gun For Dinosaur," by L. Sprague
de Camp, and "Once a Greech,"
by Evelyn E. Smith.

"A Gun For Dinosaur" is first-
rate de Camp, the kind of thing
the old master can still turn out
when he takes his time. The back-
ground of this Cretaceous hunting
story is faultlessly laid in; so are
the three main characters; the
whole thing, like the best of de
Camp's early work ("The Isolin-
guals," "Hyperpilosity," "The Mer-
man," &c.) is cool, ironic and con-
trolled.

"Once a Greech" is pure, dead-
pan farce by one of the funniest
writers the field has produced.
Miss Smitli's spaceship is manned
by a museum collection of classic
British bores, esthetic, mystic,
disciplinarian, humanitarian, all
kinds. The ghosts of previous sol-
emn stories on this interplanetary
theme drip gaudily, like punctured
rainbows, around the author's
head as she works.

Not counting a story of mine,
the rest of tlie collection (Gold's
sixth volume of Galaxy stories')
ranges from a surprisingly impres-
sive account of exploration on
Mercury by Alan E. Nourse
("Brightside Crossing"), through
a competent story by Mark Clifton
and a regrettable misfire by Edgar
Pangbom ("The Music Master of
Babylon"), to three ham-handed
entries by Clifford D. Simak, F. L.
Wallace and Richard Matheson.

THE SEEING I

by Charles Beaumont

Now, IN THE MIDST OF THE
general — and generally incredible
— science fiction depression, there
is just cause for rejoicing. For fin-
ger-crossing and breath-holding,
also, plus perfervid prayers to all
tlie available gods. On October 2,
1959, a new television series will
be launched. If it is an}^^vhere
nearly as successful as certain
powers are betting it will be, then
the dream of every green-blooded
s-f fan will come true and we’ll
have, for the first time, decent sci-
ence fiction and fantasy drama
available on a regular basis. If, by
any chance, the series should turn
out to be as successful as these
powers hope (still even money),
then something like a revolution
will occur. At this stage I cannot
imagine any force puissant
enough to drive out the westerns
and private eyes, but Paladin and
Gunn may soon find themselves

vying in a three ^vay struggle for
public favor.

The series that will spark this
revolution, if it first sparks the
great American TV audience, is
called THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
When I first heard about the proj-
ect, many months ago, I dismissed
it with the same keen intuitive
sense that led me to dismiss the
early Hammer films. Fd been ex-
posed to similar schemes. The Ziv
company had tooted its wild tin
horn over a new series called
WORLD OF GIANTS, which pub-
licists had described as “an in-
genious continuing science fiction
story.” Joining the herds of ex-
cited s-f writers, I trampled over
to tlie studio and discovered that
the aforementioned ingenuity ap-
plied strictly to the manner in
which the good producers had
lifted Richard Matheson's the

INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN.

93

94

WORLD OF GIANTS was nothing
more than a cheap adventure se-
ries featuring an FBI agent who
was six inches tall and traveled in
a suitcase but was otherwise un-
distinguished. Hiring everyone
(except, of course, Matlieson) to
cook up stories for their absurd
character, the impresarios of this
ill-starred vehicle spent several
hundred thousand dollars, then
shrugged and wrote the whole
mess off to taxes and experience.
Prospective sponsors had pole-
vaulted away from the show.
Which was the greatest, if not the
sole, indication of intelligence
among the TV advertisers thus far.

To those who have had dealings
of any nature with Holl}^vood, it
will come as no surprise that the
failure of this dismal bouillabaisse
caused other studios to drop their
plans for science fiction projects,
summarily. The connection seems
invisible, but it happens that Ray
Bradbury was on the verge of
concluding a deal for his own se-
ries, titled REPORT FROM SPACE,
and that it collapsed shortly after
the WOG debacle. My own

CHARLES ADDAMS THEATRE,

which had the blessing of the
Master, died mysteriously, the
HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN went
up in smoke. the veil
was dropped. All other s-f, fan-
tasy and supernatural experi-
ments were cancelled. And I
thought, as did everyone else, that
we had reached the end of the

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

road without ever having set foot
on it.

Then along came the news
about THE twilight zone.
There were no trumpets, no ket-
tle-drums, not even the usual two-
inch headlines. Just a simple no-
tice, buried in the Trades, to the
effect that the eminent TV writer
Rod Serling was preparing “a se-
ries of imaginative stories.” Noth-
ing more. Is it any wonder that
we scoffed? What did Rod Serling
know about the field, anyway?
Sure, he could rip off an occasion-
al Emmy-winning playhouse
90 script, but did that give him
any right to invade our demesne?

Answer: Yes.

With great misgivings, and af-
ter a suitable period of grousing
about outsiders and why didn’t the
nctw^orks buy onr shows, we —
Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury
and I — agreed to discuss the pos-
sibility of joining the program.
I don't know what we expected
Serling to be like, but we were all
surprised to find that he was a nice
guy who happened to love good
science fiction and fantasy and
saw no reason why it shouldn’t
be brought to the screen (or
tube). My own resentment van-
ished during that first meeting.
But I still had doubts. Serling’s
talk was good, but what about
the scripts? The first nine were
written by him, based on his story
ideas. Wasn't this a bit cheeky?
(“Yes,” said Serling. “However, I

THE SEEING I

95

had no choice. My promise to
write most of the scripts was a
very big factor in the network’s ac-
ceptance of the project.”) I took
the nine home with me, deter-
mined to hate them.

Now it is axiomatic that noth-
ing galls a science fiction pro more
than to see 'an outsider” bumble
into the field, rework a whiskered
theme which, in his naivete, he
takes to be supremely original, and
make either, or both, a fortune and
a critical splash. There are those of
us who will never understand the
success of Schute’s pallid on the
beach; those of us who, in the
deepest abysses of our hearts, wish
the man writhing ill for fattening
himself on a repast prepared by
others. There are dozens of end-
of-the-world stories by toilers in
this special vineyard, and most
are superior to the beach party.
But they are labeled "science fic-
tion” and so must remain buried
in the vaults, attics and garages of
the faithful few.

Thinking these poisonous
tlioughts, I read Serllng’s first
script. It was, or seemed to be, an
end-of-the-world story. Resisting
the impulse to throw the wretched
thing across the room, I read on.
A man is alone in a town which
shows every sign of having been
recently occupied. He finds ciga-
rettes burning in ash trays. Stoves
are still warm. Chimneys are
smoking. But no one is there, only
this one frightened man who can’t

even remember his name . • •

Old stuflf?

Of course. I thought so at the
time, and I think so now. But
there was one element in the story
which kept me from my custom-
ary bitterness. The element was
quality. Quality shone on every
page. It shone in the dialogue and
in the scene set-ups. And because
of this, the story seemed fresh and
new and powerful. There was one
compromise, but it was made sole-
ly for the purpose of selling the
series.

The second script concerned a
prison planet and a mechanical
woman.

The third was about a man w^ho
returns to the village of his youth
and finds nothing changed.

The fourth concerned an un-
usual pact with the devil . . .

At midnight, when I’d finished
reading the material, I knew that
Serling was an "outsider” only in
terms of experience; in terms of
instinct, he was a veteran. Brad-
bury and Matheson read the
scripts also, and in very little time
we all decided to join the twi-
light ZONE team.

It’s been exciting work. Serling
and his associates Buck Houghton
and William Selph are doing their
best to make this a first rate pro-
duction, and with CBS and Uvo
important sponsors behind them,
that’s the kind of production it’s
turning out to be. The budget is
among the highest for half-hour

96

dramas. Very litde comer-cutting
goes on. If a script calls for a col-
lapsing building, then a building
is seen to collapse and no non-
sense about it. Nor is there any
problem about directors and per-
formers, either, as so frequendy is
the case in television, for a circle
of excitement surrounds the show.
People want to be associated with
it. Among the names connected
with segments already finished or
about to go before the cameras:
(directors) Emmy- winners Rob-
ert Stevens and Jack Smight (‘'Ed-
die'*), Robert Parrish, Mitchell Lci-
sen, Robert Florey (about whom
later), and John Brahm ("The
Lodger," "Hangover Square"); and
performers David Wayne, Gig
Young, Kenneth Haigh (star of
Broadway's "Look Back in An-
ger"), Dan Duryea, Richard Con-
te, Ed W>Tin, Ida Lupino, Paul
Douglas, and Inger Stevens. Au-
thors whose original stories have
serv^ed as spring-boards for scripts
include LuciUe Fletcher ("The
Hitchhiker"), Paul Fairman
("Brothers Beyond The Void"),
Lynn Venable ("Time Enough At
Last"), and George Clayton John-
son ("Rubber Face").

A single example (chosen be-
cause I know it to be true) will
sufiice, I think, to indicate the
quality we may expect. My Play-
boy story, "Perchance to Dream,"
was selected for production a few
months ago. Serling told me to

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

dramatize it but to make no
changes. He advised me to forget
everything I'd learned about tele-
vision taboos. They didn't exist on
TWILIGHT ZONE. I should do the
script the way I saw it, without
any thought to the old lady in Du-
buque, "who probably has a lot
more taste than she's given credit
for."

Believing the instructions to be
well meant but hardly to be taken
seriously, I nonetheless did write
the script precisely as I saw it. To
my amazement, it was happily ac-
cepted. Nothing was changed.
Not one line. Not one word. Not
even the wild technical directions,
which called for an impressionis-
tic amusement park, a roller coast-
er ride and an automobile crash.

It was filmed exactly as writ-
ten. I know because I was on the
set, watching, unable to believe
tliat any of it was truly happen-
ing. I'd done over thirty teleplays
and seen them spoiled by the hun-
dred-handed companies. But it
14^^75 happening. An author was
seeing his work treated with re-
spect.

The director of "Perchance"
was Robert Florey, a horror expert
who counts, among other projects,
a little thing called "Frankenstein"
— for which he conceived the idea
and ^vrote the screenplay, in col-
laboration. Throughout the TV
filming, he strove for quality. It
might have been the most expen-
sive MGM feature. He rooted out

the seeing I

97

the meaning of certain lines, fre-
quently surprising me with sym-
bols and shadings Fd neither
planned nor suspected. The set
was truly impressionistic, recall-
ing the days of ‘"Caligari” and
'‘Liliom.'' The costumes were gen-
erally perfect. And in the starring
role, Richard Conte gave a per-
formance which displayed both
intensity and subtlety.

Matheson reports that the same
sort of care was shown in the film-
ing of his “Disappearing AcF'
(from Fantasy and Science Fic-
tion')y “Third from the Sun’* and
“Flight.”

If the show fails, it won’t be be-
cause we haven’t tried. Everyone
at CBS is pulling for the project.
Because ever^^one knows that
with the success of twilight
ZONE, w’e will enter a new era of
TV entertainment. Even now,
producers all over Hollj^vood are
waiting, poised, ready to jump
aboard. They only want to sec
whether it’s a band wagon or a
funeral cortege.

Me, I’m optimistic.

If you are, if you believe, with
me, that a really top grade show of
this kind innst succeed, then I’d
suggest that you begin making out
lists of the stories you'd like to see
dramatized. And keep those fin-
gers crossed!

Random jiotes: For Frankenstein-
ophites, Robert Florey offers this
choice bit of information. Having

made a lot of money on “Dracula,”
Universal decided, in 1931, to do
another horror story. The trouble
was, no one could think of any-
thing sufficiently horrible. Florey,
who was employed on the lot, had
read Mary Shelley’s book and
suggested it to the then Grand
Panjandrum, Carl Laemmle. The
old man shrugged. Laemmle, Jun-
ior, thought the title was “impos-
sible. Who could remember it?”
Finally the story editor of the stu-
dio communicated his enthusiasm,
and they decided to go ahead with
the project. Florey set about revis-
ing the classic. It was he who
blocked out the shape of the pic-
ture, and invented the Monster as
we know and love Him. (For the
sake of nostalgia, a dummy Mon-
ster appears in “Perchance.”)
Florey can’t remember exactly
where he got the idea of raising
Karloff into the lightning, but he
can tell you about the genesis of
another memorable scene. “I was
living on Ivar Street, then,” re-
calls the director. “It was late at
night and I couldn’t sleep, so I
went out walking. They had just
built a new restaurant in the
neighborhood, called Van de-
Camp’s. It had a blue windmill.
I stopped walking and thought,
you know, something could be
done with a windmill . . And
who among us can forget what
was done with that windmill!
Florey, a soft-spoken, modest man
with immense eyes and a scholarly

98

air, was originally set to direct
'‘Frankenstein.’' The famous Brit-
ish director James Whale w^as on
hand, however, and he insisted
that they give him the assignment.
Such was his reputation, and sal-
ary, that Universal had no choice
but to accede to his demands.
(Florey admits that “Jimmie did a
good job.”) Also set was Bela Lu-
gosi, for whom tlie entire project
was begun. He was to play the
Monster. But at the last moment
he backed out, claiming that the
role, a non-speaking one, was a
come-down after “Dracula.” . . .

Riding for a fall debut is a se-
ries called SPACE. It will be a
semi-documentar)^ treatment of
man’s conquest of the moon. I
know nothing else about tlie show
except that submissions from sci-
ence fiction writers are not partic-
ularly welcome. According to pro-
ducer Bob Leach, tlie s-f bo}^ can't
seem to keep their feet on die
ground. A bunch of dreamers. Al-
ways coming up with wild-hair
ideas. (You mean like rocket ships
carrying men to the moon, Mr.
Leach?) , , ,

Of die continuing cataract of
so-called science fiction movies, it
can only be said that the question,
“Where do you go when you reach
rockbottom?” has been answered.
You go sideways. Hammer Films,
as we now know, flattered but to
deceive. “The Horror of Dracula”
contained a few rewarding scenes

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

but was generally a tasteless chow-
der. All subsequent films from the
well-intentioned company have
been uniformly embarrassing. The
latest, “The Hound of the Basker-
villes,” is a ludicrous travesty on
Doyle's splendid tale, and should
particularly be avoided by all those
who remember the Universal-
Rathbone-Bruce original — a far
superior treatment of the sub-
ject. . . .

Speaking of Rathbone, he does
himself proud in a new album en-
tided “Basil Rathbone Reads Ed-
gar Allan Poe” (Caedmon TC
1028). As a rule I avoid “spoken
records” for the simple reason that
I seldom play them. This is an
exception. Rathbonc’s reading of
“The Black Cat” and “The Masque
of die Red Death” is, in a way, like
Klemperer's reading of Beetho-
vT^n's Ninth: it reveals new
depths, new subdeties on each
subsequent hearing. . . .

The same is true of Boris Kar-
loff’s loving interpretation of “Kip-
ling’s Just So Stories” (Caedmon
TC 1038), though I must say that
this is a somewhat specialized
treat. To some, Kipling was a great
master of the art of childhood fan-
tasy; to others (in which group I
count myself), he was an insufiFer-
ablc hack, forever writing down to
“litde minds.” Children today do
not much care for Kipling (ex-
cepting, always, his admirable
JUNGLE book) and I think this
is why. Lewis Carroll didn't write

the seeing I

99

down, whatever his intentions cisive and demanding of logic as a
might have been, and neither did child’s. . . .

Kenneth Graham or L. Frank I have heard that there is a mo-
Baum. They knew instinctively tion picture called "The Woman-
that there is no mind quite so in- Eaters." I refuse to believe it.

This year especially. The Magazine of FANTASY
AND SCIENCE FICTION is a fitting and imagina-
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’ANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

527 Madison Ave., New York 22, N. Y.

When a distinguished author such as Robert Nathan turns his
hand to science fiction, the result is likely to be something
unexpected and different. On the other hand, it is not at all
unexpected that the author of one more spring, portrait
OF JENNIE, and so many fine others should produce such a
deft, delightful and double-edged melodrama as

A PRIDE OF CARROTS:
or, Venus Well Served

by Robert Nathan

ACT one: Scene 1

(The scene is a blank plain on a
distant planet. Could it be Venus?
Who knotosP But on the other
hand, why not? In the background
there is an appropriate, mysicri-
ous scene of hills or mountains,
rocks or grottoes, done by an im-
aginative scenic-designer. The set
is simple; the wings of atigels
must not be clipped, producers
must be comforted; High School
auditoriums and summer theatres
must be kept in mind. We go for-
ward from there.

(A moment after the curtain
rises, two space -travellers float
slotcly downward, attached to
parachutes. They are from earth,
and suitably attired; one of them

holds a ray-gun in his hands, the
other carries a walkie-talkie. They
land, gaze about them, and at
each other. They are alert,
alarmed, ami ready for anything.
One of them beruls down, and
picks a daisy. As he does so, it
gives a squeak of agony. He does-
nt notice the squeak; he studies
the daisy. Then he takes his hel-
met off.)

1st Visitor: (Taking a deep
breath.) Flora. So there’s air.
(Breathing.) Quite good air, as a
matter of fact.

(The second man takes ofiF his
helmet. We now meet the two vis-
itors— first, U. S. Navy Air Force
Commander Brian Potter, and
second, the well-known news

100

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

101

commentator, Alfred Caudle. It is
Caudle who carries the walkie-
talkie.)

Caudle: Where are we, do you
think?

Potter: (With firm satisfac-
tion.) On Venus, obviously. The
air is piue, wind moderate, w. to
S.W., visibility good.

Caudle: (Into his walkie-

talkie. ) Calling NBC, Earth. Call-
ing NBC, Earth. Come in. Earth.

Potter: ( Unwrapping small
American Flag, and naval en-
sign. ) I now claim this planet for
the United States of America, and
tlie Fifth Fleet.

Caudle: Wait a minute— wait a
minute. I have to make my own
claim. (He unrolls the flag of the
State of Texas.) In the name of
the sovereign state of Texas ( that's
in case we find anything sub-
merged) and my sponsors. South-
west Oil, Surely White Tooth
Paste, Heidelberg (Wisconsin)
Beer, and Bar B-Q-Dog Food.
Calling NBC. Come in. Earth.

(Both men plant their flags in
the ground. They are much
moved. They look at each other;
then they gravely shake hands.)

Caudle: This is a solemn mo-
ment, Commander.

Potter: It is, Caudle. The first
men on Venus.

Caudle: It's a curious thing; I
thought I heard a squeak when
you picked that daisy.

Potter (troubled): Did you?
... To tell you the truth, I did

too. I thou^t it was static in my
ear-phone.

Caudle: Come in, NBC. What
sort of people do you think we’ll
find. Commander?

Potter: I don’t know. Could be
very like ourselves. Not a naval
community, I fancy.

Caudle: It's a funny thing, I
can't raise Earth.

Potter: Probably hit a dead
spot somewhere.

Caudle: Oh, fine. I'm on a coast-
to-coast hook-up in less than two
hours. With seven new sponsors—
and I can't get NBC!

Potter: They can't blame you
for that. The main thing is— we got
here! Well— I'm going to explore.
I think perhaps you'd better stay
here so as not to lose each other.
I'll just take a look around— see
what's over those low hills.

Caudle: (Seating himself on a
rock.) Don’t be too long, Com-
mander. I confess, I feel a little
nervous . . . not knowing what
might come out of the bushes.

Potter: You can have my ray-
gun, if you like.

Caudle: What will you do?

Potter (calmly): Run like
hell. (He tosses the ray -gun to
Caudle, and walks off . )

(Caudle, after gazing about
him imeasily, sets himself to adjust
his walkie-talkie. A gryphon en-
ters quietly, R. He is a combina-
tion of horse, rooster, and sabre-
tooth tiger. He approaches Cau-
dle.)

102

Gryphon: (Half clearing his
throat.) Hrmm! (It is a horrid
sound. )

( Caudle leaps half off his rock.
He turns to look at the gryphon,
and all but swoons in terror.)

Caudle: A . . . get away, you
monsterl Where s my gun? Potter!
Help!

Gryphon: I beg your pardon?

Caudle: Potter! Potter! How do
you shoot the damn thing? Hel
. . . What?

Gryphon: I said, I beg your
pardon. Are you ill?

Caudle: You . . . you talk!

Gryphon: Naturally. Why not?
So do you. Haven’t I seen you
somc\^1iere before?

Caudle: Certainly not!

Gryphon ( thoughtfully ) : Ive
seen you somewhere ... I have
it! On NBC— the Cradle Hour.

Caudle: But . . . that’s televi-
sion! That’s my program.

Gryphon: Exactly. That’s where
I’ve seen you. You’re Caudle.

Caudle: Do you mean to say
that our television reaches to . . .
that you have . . . that . . . that
there’s television on Venus? (Into
the ivalkle-t alkie.) Come in NBC
— for heav'en’s sake!

Gryphon: Venus? What do you
mean, Venus? You’re from Venus.
Up there. ( He points. )

Caudle: But that’s Earth. Come
in, Earth!

Gryphon: Nonsense . . . this
is Earth. At least . . . we call it
Earth. And we call that Venus.

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Apparently you call that Earth,
and this Venus. Well . . . that’s
semantics for you. Silly, isn’t it
What is your vv^ord for . . • for
miscegenation?

Caudle: WTiy . . . inter-mar-
riage, I suppose. Mesalliance.

Gryphon: We call it cross-pol-
lination. And what would you call
a group of carrots?

Caltdle: a bunch?

Gryphon: Good heavens! A
bunch? A pride of carrots! That is,
of course, on tliis side of the bor-
der. And a gaggle of onions. But
if you were on the otlier side
... it would be an exaltation of
onions, and a deceit of carrots.
Semantics, you see.

Caudle ( bemused): I see. I see.

Gryphon ( modestly ) : A charm
of gryplions.

Caudle: You are a . . . gry-
phon, I take it?

Gryphon: Of course. Rather
highly placed, as a matter of fact.
You see the gold collar? (He
shows Caudle his collar. ) I belong
to the Secretar>' of the Interior.
My name is Fido.

Caudle: And he ... ?

Gryphon: A very able carrot.
Quite famous . . . for his wife’s
tassel. You’ve seen ordinary car-
rots, no doubt . . . with their
tops? But this is a most unusual
tassel. Blue. Everyone is copying
it.

Caudle (slowly): A female car-
rot, with a blue tassel. And you
hav^e television?

A PRIDE OF C.\RROTS

103

Gryphon: Oh, yes, indeed. The
Secretary’s entire family times you
in every Sunday night. Tliey never
miss a progi*am. That’s where I
saw you ... I have no set of my
own, of course.

Caudle: I can’t get NBC . . .
How does it happen that you, an
animal, are bound as a sort of
servant to a ... a vegetable?

Gryphon (dmpltj): One has to
eat.

Caudle: (With a shudder.)
Vegetables?

Gryphon: Lord, no! Dried
seeds . • . truffles, marzipan . . .
you look a little like marzipan
yourself. Do you mind if I try
...? (He takes a nip out of
Caudle* s rear.)

Caudle: Owl

Gryphon: Mm, Delicious. But
definitely not maizipan. What is
it?

Caudle: Meat, you fool!

Gryphon: You don’t say! Meat?
I never saw meat before.

Caudle: You’re meat youi*self.

Gryphon: I am? No! Splendid.
(He takes a bite out of his oum
arm. ) Ow! That hurt!

Caudle: Of course it hurt. Now
stop it. And go find your master,
and— tell him I’m here. You say
he’s a carrot?

Gryphon: Naturally. What else
couldhe be?

Caudle: I want to meet him.

Gryphon: He’ll want to meet
you, too. There are one or two
things that puzzle us—

(He goes away, and Potter
returns. )

Potter: I say, Caudle . . .
tliere’s a whole field of wild flow-
ers . . . anemones, I tliink . . .
just over that rise . . singing
hke birds!

Caudle ( glumly ) : I know.

Potter: You know?

Caudle: We had a visitor. It
seems . . . we’re in some kind of
vegetable world . . .

Potter: A vegetable world?
. . . Good heavens! I say, Caudle
—you’re not a vegetarian by any
chance, are you?

Caudle: No . . . Tliank heav-
ens. I can take them or leave them
alone. Still ... in a sense . . .
you’re right, of course When I
think of vegetable soup . . .

Potter ( sharply ) : F or get it!
Don’t think of it! And when we
meet these . . . onions— or car-
rots— or whatever they are . . ,
remember . . . we’ve never eat-
en anything but ... air ... in
our lives.

Caudle: They probably would-
n’t mind our having eaten cater-
pillars . . .

Potter: Air, Caudle, air. It’s
safer. Till we look around us.

Caudle: They’ve looked at^ us
already. I’m afraid.

Potter: The devil you say!

Caudle: They’ve seen me on
television.

Potter: (startled): Tliey have?
Then we can get tliroiigh to
Earth. . • •

104

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Caudle (disconsolately): Sure.
How?

Potter: Ask somebody!

Caudle: How do you ask a car-
rot?

Potter: Cheer up, old man. It
could be worse. In the navy you
meet all kinds of people. IVe met
vegetables before.

( There is a choral-like sound of
womens voices; and a middle-
sized carrot enters L., carrying a
water-dowser’s hazel twig, all in
gold. He comes up to Caudle, and
pushes him gently out of the way. )

Carrot: Pardon me, sir.

( The wand bends down; at
which the carrot gives a whistle,
and an oversized market-basket is
wheeled in by two other carrots.
In the basket is a large male car-
rot, with a fine green tassel on his
head, and an attractive female
CiUTot, with a blue tassel. The
dowser points to the spot; the two
servant carrots wheel the basket
over, and tlien stand back; and
the large male carrot gets out, by
opening a wicker in the side.)

Tjik Large Carrot: Good earth
beneath me . . . ? Moist?

Dowser; Yes, sir.

CvimoT: (Giving his hand to
the blue tmselcd carrot.) Come,
my dear. (She steps down, beside
him. )

(The tvv^o servant carrots reach
into tlie baskets, and bring out a
howl of water which they place
Ciirefully near their master, and
two tliorn bushes in pots which

they place on either side of him.
Then, and then only, he turns to-
ward Caudle and Potter.)

Carrot: Welcome; to our
planet. (He bows; the lady curt-
seys; and Caudle and Potter both
bow.)

Caudle: Thank you.

Potter: In the name of the
United States Nav>^ . . .

Caudle ( hurriedly ) : Later,
Commander, later. Your majesty
. . . that is, your majesties . . . ?

Blue Top: (She has a lovely
voice. ) We’re not majesties. There
are none here. This is a republic;
like Texas. My husband is Secre-
tary of the Interior; his name is
Edwin and I’m liis wife, Edwina.
And you’re the famous news com-
mentator, Alfred Caudle; and
you’re Commander Potter. We saw
your take-o£F, and we watched
your trip . . . though we lost you
when you rounded Mais. Other-
wise, w e should hav^e been here to
greet you.

Caudle: Madam, you can per-
haps conceive tlie feelings with
which Commander Potter and
myself gaze for tlie first time at
this unfamiliar scene . . . the first
mortal eyes to . . . glimpse these
mountains, distant not only in
space, but . . .

Edwin; Wc are perhaps im-
mortal?

Caudle (confused): No, no . . .
... I meant ... I mean to say
. . . the first trav^ellers in space
. . . Tlie first . . . the first men.

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

105

Edwin: No insult meant, no um-
brage taken. Continue.

Caudle (unhappily): I find
myself somewhat at a loss, your
Excellency.

Edwina (gently): You must be
weary, Mr. Caudle . . . and you.
Commander. And hungry, per-
haps. What food would please
you? That is ... if we have it.
What do you like to eat?

Caudle: Air.

Edwina (puzzled): Air? Well
. . . there is plenty of that. Are
you thirsty? For what?

Potter: Water will do very
nicely, madam.

Edwin (surprised): Waterl My
dear . . . tlie man wants water.

ED^VINA: Does he want it over
him ... or would he like to
stand in it?

Potter: TU just drink it, if you
don't mind.

Edwina ( uncertainly ) : Of
course. ( She motions to one of the
servants. ) Adalbert . . . Bring
the gentlemen a cup of water . . .

(Adalbert reaches into the bas-
ket for a cup, fills it from the water
pot, and hands it to Potter, who
takes a swallow, and looks sur-
prised. )

Potter: It has a kind of taste
. . . not unpleasant

Edwina ( cheerfully ) : We've
been . . . ah . . . sitting in it,
I’m afraid . . .

Potter (smiling): To your
health . . . both oi you. (He
drinks the remainder.)

Caudle; Mysterious are the
ways of the Lord. Having made
man in His own image . . .

Edwin: What?

Caudle: I said . . . The Lord
having made man in His own
image . . .

Edwin: Why man, in particu-
lar?

Caudle: It says so. In Genesis
1 - 26 .

Edwin: Ah? But surely . . . tlie
Lord, of whom you speak . . .
and by whom, I imagine, you
mean the Creator . . . must Him-
self be the root of all tilings— No?

Caudle: In a sense, of

course . . .

Edwin: Exactly. God is a root.
You don't look in the least like a
root. (Turning to his wife.) Does
he, my dear? Do they?

Edwina: Not at all. He has no
stalk. (Brightly to Potter.) Did
you think you did?

Potter: I'm afraid I never gave
it much thought, ma'am.

Edwina (gently): You should
think about it. We re very down-
to-earth people here, I'm afraid.
Very literal. We have to be. The
rabbits would have had us, other-
wise . . . long ago.

Caudle: How did you prevent
it? . . . If you don't mind my
asking.

Edwin: I don’t mind telhng you
it was touch and go, for a while.
But then we managed to drop a
few seeds inside a thorn bush. Af-
ter a while we moved out . . .

106

and took tlie tliom bush with us.
Tliat was long ago, of course . . .
when we had only the rudiments
of a brain. But it was more than
the rabbits had. From the tufts of
rabbit wool left hanging on the
briars, we made our first clothes.
Tliat fooled them completely. We
left them to polish oflF the lettuces,
and began our development. As
you can see, we use the thorn as
a badge of authority.

Edwin a: How did you develop?

Caudle: I think we hid in trees.

Pomm: Nonsense. We evolved
from the sea. The mammal, or
milk-secreting vertebrate . . .

ED^\^N: Er . . . pardon me.
Commander . . . Later, perhaps?
There arc certain rules of hospital-
ity— The leaders of the nation, the
carrot-tops themselves, are waiting
to greet you, with appropriate ex-
ercises. Tliere will be entertain-
ment by some very well-known
vegetables; and speeches by the
Heads of State, including myself.
My speech is being written for me
at this ver>’^ moment, by a talented
young parsnip in the Bureau of
Agriculture. So— with your permis-
sion . . .

Edwina: Just a moment, Ed-
win. Your daugliter . . .

Edwin (sharply): What about
my daughter?

Edwlna: She is on her way
hero.

Edwin: Damn.

(A sound of galloping is heard,
and a moment later the gryphon

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

comes trotting on L.— with a
charming young female carrot on
his back. She slips to tlie ground,
and greets tlie travellers with a
wave of her hand. Her name is
Alice. )

Alice: Hi!

(Caudle and Potter bow. Ed-
win siglis heavily.)

Edwina (graciously): This is
our daughter, gentlemen; Alice,
allow me to present you to our
visitors from space, Mr. Caudle
and the Commander Potter.

Alice: I know aU about tliem,
Mother. Welcome to Carrotania,
gentlemen.

Edwin: I have already wel-
comed them, my dear.

Alice: You don t understand the
animal kingdom, father. They’d
much rather be welcomed by a
young girl.

Edwina ( shocked ) : Really,
Alice! Where do you learn such
tilings?

Alice (calmly): At school. It’s
all in Zoology One.

‘Spring, the sweet Spring, is the
year’s pleasant king;

Then blooms each thing, then
maids dance in a ring.

Cold doth not sting, the pretty
birds do sing

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-wit-
ta-wool’

Edwin: For heavens sake, Ed-
wina ... 1

Caudle: Well, Well!

Auce: I know another one,
too . . .

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

107

‘The blessed Damozel lean d out

From the gold bar of Heaven.

Her blue grave eyes were deep-
er much

Than a deep water, even.

She had three lilies in her hand.

And the stars in her hair were
seven/

They really do hke young girls,
father: You claim to be so realis-
tic .. .

Edwin; Oh . . . all right, all
riglit . . .

Edwin a; (To Alice.) That’s
enough, dear. We were just going
to escort them back to town . . .
you can go vdth us if you like. But
try to control your high spirits.
We’re all a little edgy, I’m afraid
—this last day of waiting has been
—well, after all, they could have
landed in Onionapolis!

Alice; But they didn’t. The
onions didn’t get them— we got
them ... I like the Commander.
He’s cute.

Potter: Well— thank you very
muchl

Edwin; Oh God! . . . Come on,
Edwina! Gentlemen . . .

( Edwin steps back into tho
basket, follow(^d by Edwina. The
servants take up the bowl of water
and the two pots of briars, and
wheel the basket off.)

Potter: I suppose we’d better
follow . . . ?

Caudle; Lead the way. Com-
mander . . .

Auce; (Coming between them,
and linking her arm in both of

theirs. ) My parents think I’m quite
mad. I’m not really. I watch
television all the time. I should
like to be a great actress, and help
to sell cigarettes. Do you think
that’s abnormal?

Potter (heartily): Not where I
come from.

Alice: I like you. Potter. You
interest me. (To Caudle— toUh
charm.) You too, of course . . .
shall we go? Come along, Fido.

(Tliey leave, arm in arm, fol-
lowed by the gryphon.)

ACT one; Scene 2

(I have changed my mind about
High School auditoriums; this play
will be too rich for them.

( The scene is the private office,
or studij-and’Star Council-room of
the Secretary General of the
Party, in Onionapolis, in the
United Socialist Republic of the
Leeks and Onions. Naturally, it is
underground. The Secretary him-
self, 0"Dor, a very large white
onion, is seated at his desk; while
before him sits, in humble mien,
a leek.)

O’Dor; You say they have land-
ed. How do you know?

Leek; We have it on the best
authority, sir— tlie underground—

O’Dor: They have not landed
in our own Onionland, or in the
Republic of the Leeks.

Leek; No, sir.

O’Don: They have dared to

108

land near Carrotapolis. That is a
grave oversight on the part of our
security pohce.

Leek: Unfortunately, our side of
the planet was turned away from
the direction from which they
came, and so tliey landed on the
back side.

0*Dor: Tlie back side. Hmmm.
See what you can do with that.
Spindle.

Leek (Spindle): Yes, Little
Father.

O’Dor : Ho we ver— exclianging
insults with the carrots isn’t going
to bring these space-men over to
our own side. And we must have
them. Spindle. We must get hold
of their technical skill; we must
have their know-how— before the
carrots get it. Or else ... (He
makes a motion indicative of '*it is
finished-diaputr )

Leek; Yes, Little Father.

O'Dor; It is ridiculous— is it not?
—that we, who invented televi-
sion, jet propulsion, the atom
bomb, and the bicycle, should be
deprived of these two men who
could tell us how to use them—?
That our marvellous studies in sci-
ence, and our never-to-be-chal-
lenged will for peace, should be
frustrated by the fact that two
men, arriving from distant space,
had the misfortune to land upon
our planet’s behind, and are now
the guests of our mortal enemies,
the carrotsi (He rises, and holds
up his denied fist.) Death to
carrotsi

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Leek: (Doing likewise.) Death
to carrotsi

( They sit down peacefully
again. )

O’Dor: By the way— when you
write to Carrotania again, ask Edi^*
win to send us 20,000 more tons
of bone meal, and ten of leaf mold
for the spinach beds.

Leek: He writes that he’d like
about fifteen carloads of ammo-
nium sulphate.

O’Dor: At the usual price?

Leek: Yes . . .

O’Dor: Hmm— ammonium sul-
phate is a war material. Spindle.

Leek: Are you sure, sir?

O’Dor: You could lose your
head for that remark. I am always
sure. The mere fact of my saying
it, makes it so. If you do not under-
stand this, Spindle, you do not
understand the making of history.
This great truth alone, within two
generations, will conquer the
world. To create truth, Spindle—
that is the great thing! Not merely
to go looking for it— have we ever
used this sulphate in a war?

Leek: Not to my knowledge, sir.

O’Dor: Good. Good. Then we
are the first to discover that it is
war material. Add 20% to the
price.

Leek: Yes, Little Father.

O’Dor: And bring me those sci-
entists from the planet they— er-
roneously— call Earth.

Leek: How am I going to do
that. Little Father?

O’Dor: This I leave entirely up

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

109

to you. There are ways— of the
shangliai, the kidnap, the finagle,
the seduction . . .

Leek: With an onion?

O’Dor ( dangerously ) ; What is
the matter with an onion? A
sweet, Spanish onion . . . ?

Leek {floundering): Well . . .
it is only that . . .

O’Dor: This also could cost you
your head, Spindle.

Leek (meekly): Yes, Little
Fatlicr. We will do it with an
onion. . . . Unless—

O’Dor: Yes? Unless?

Leek: Nothing ... I had a
thought, suddenly; but it is better
if you don’t know it— then you are
innocent, no matter what.

O’Dor ( excitedly ) : Of course I
am innocent! Already I deny it! I
deny it categorically! It is alto-
gether the fault of Carrotania!
. . . Did you suggest otherwise?

Leek (hwricdly): No, Little
Father— no indeed,

O’Dor: I do not dislike you,
Spindle.

Leek: Oh— thank you, sir—

O’Dor: Tlierefore you have a
future. At least, for a while. But
you still have things to learn. One:
The head of tlie state is always
right; lie cannot, by his very na-
ture, be anything else. A Secretary
General who is wTong is unthink-
able. It is the same as saying: an
onion without his rings. So— since
he cannot be wTong, and must be
right, he must also be innocent.
All of wiiich comes under the

heading of being right. Right?

Leek: Right.

OT)on: Two: The United So-
cialist Republic of Leeks and On-
ions is a land of peace and free-
dom, mother of the arts, and home
of the sciences. We allow’ no differ-
ence of opinion; therefore there is
freedom, for no one interferes witli
what is allow^ed. Our artists enjoy
the happiest of lives, painting
onions; and our scientists have al-
ready three times turned biolog>%
zoology, and tlie entire metaphys-
ics of the universe upside dowm,
and back again. When you can
understand all these points, and
add them together, you can sec
how silly it is to argue about
whether ammonium sulphate is
war material ... or had wc gone
on from there?

Leek: Yes, Little Father. We
w^ere talking about a sw’cct Span-
ish onion . . .

O'Dor: You know" one?

Leek: I do, Little Father.

O’Dor: a nice one, hey? With
a silky skin? No wrinkles . . . ?

Leek: Like ivory".

O’Dor: And very Spmiish? You
know" what I mean . . .

Leek: Exactly . . .

O’Dor: Hot and sw"ect . . .

Leek: Like a tamale—

O’Dor (Clicking his fingers.)
With those castanets—

Leek: And what a dancer!

O’Dor: Very Spanish. Sw'cet
and hot. Languorous, hey?

Leek: Melting . . .

110

O’Dor: {Suddenlij coming to.)
What are we talking about?

Leek: I don't know, Little
Father. Was it about tlie planets
behind?

O'Dor: N-o . . .

Leek: I know. It was about the
space-men. The men from tlie
planet they call Eartli,

O'Dor: That’s it. I knew it.
Well, then— what are we waiting
for? Off you go; and bring them
back with you. Deatli to carrots!

Leek (rmng): And— the little
Spanish number?

O’Dor: Send her in to me.

Leek (meekly): Yes, sir. (Lift-
ing his fist.) Death to carrots.

(He goes out. As he goes out,
he is passed by General Shallot,
who enters. The general wears a
colorful uniform, and is much be-
medaUed. He lifts liis fist in greet-
ing, and is greeted by tlie General
Secretary in return.)

Shallot: Etcetera.

O’Dor: Etcetera. Come in.
Shallot. Sit down. (Shallot scats
himself.) What news from the
front?

Shallot (comfortably) : Wliich
front. Comrade?

O’Dor: (Hed much rather he
called Little Father.) Any of
them. All of them.

Shallot: We are continuing
our tactic of embarrassing the
enemy at all points. So far, we
have caught twenty-seven viola-
tors of our territory. Naturally, we
have been obliged to cross the

fantasy and science fiction

border; in some cases we were
forced to go as far as fifteen miles
inside carrot territory, in order to
be violated.

O’Dor: Were these carrots
armed?

Shallot: Who knows? We
were.

O’Dor: Well— tliere it is— a
clear case of provocation. We will
send the usual protest.

Shallot: Exactly, Comrade.

O’Dor: You could call me Ex-
cellency. Or Little Fatlier.

Shallot ( proudly ) : I am a de-
scendant of the garlics. A garlic
does not call ani/thing Excellency.

O’Dor (hastily): I was only
joking. Ha ha ha. Here we are all
comrades! All excellencies . . .
Little Fathers. Except Leeks. Now
I will tell you something. As you
know, the Earth-men landed to-
day in Carrotania.

Shallot (Lifting his fist.)
Death to carrots!

O’Dor ( likewise ) : Likewise.
By the way. Shallot— what are you
doing tonight?

Shallot; Imperialistic war-
mongers! Nothing.

O’Dor: Capitalist swine! Come
to dinner.

Shallot: Love to. Continue,
Comrade.

O’Dor: Should they not have
landed here?

Shallot: Possibly.

O’Dor (outraged): What do
you mean, possibly? We are going
to bring them here!

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

111

Shallot (gravely): Hmm— that
may not be so wise, Comrade.

O’Dor: And why not? Don't
you want to learn how to set oflF
guided missiles? How to fly a jet?

Shallot; That is not the point.
Comrade; the point is— do we
want to lose our right to make
complaints? Such things are weap-
ons, too— the very best weapons.
They cost nothing. And they cre-
ate an atmosphere— an odor— it is
a real onion odor.

O’Dor (slowly): I see. Then
you are opposed to the kidnapping
of these Earth-men . . . ?

.Shallot: Definitely.

O'Dor: Very well. I will think
about it. You can go, General. (As
Shallot rises. ) By the way, I have
news for you. You have been pro-
moted to Field Marshal.

(Shallot clicks his heels, bows,
lifts his fist, and gives a loud bel-
low. )

Shallot: Strength to onionsi

O'Dor: See you at dinner.
Eight-thirt>- sharp.

( Shallot goes out. O’Dor reach-
es into his desk, and brings out a
phone. He dials.)

O’Dor: Hello— Secret police?
General Sliallot has just left my
office. Liquidate him.

ACT one: Scene 3

(A garden in Carrotopolis. It is
evening. Alice, and Herbert, a
young carrot captain, are discov-
ered in each others arms.)

Alice; (Breaking away.) Her-
bert . . . we re mad.

Herbert: Angell

Auce: (Rather matter-of-fdct-
hj.) Mad. Wildly, ecstatically
mad. Do you love me?

Herbert: Madly.

Alice ( languidly ) : Life is a bag
of peat-moss . . . Haven’t we
done all this before?

Herbert: Only once.

Alice: And you enjoy it enough
to do it again?

Herbert ( uncertainly ) ; Ye-es
... I think so.

Alice: Life is so boring, Her-
bert. Love is so seasonal. I must
ask Brian if it’s seasonal where he
comes from.

Herbert ( jealously ) : Brian?

Alice: The navy man. Potter.

Herbert: What would he know
about love? He has no blossoms.

Alice: He must have some-
thing. . . . Love is so dull, Her-
bert. All those flies, evci*>"\vhere
you go.

Herbert: Bees, darling. Not
flies— bees.

Alice (petulantly): Whats the
difference? They have wings. Love
has wings, Herbert— here today,
and gone tomorrow. Brian has
wings. He wears them on his uni-
form. He says they're Navy wings.
Do you think the Navy is lov^e,
Herbert? Oh . . . but you would-
n’t know; you’re in tlie Anny, are-
n’t you?

IIerbert: Kiss mel

Alice: If you like. (They em-

112

brace , ) I think perhaps 111 dye my
top. Blue, like mother s. If I were
blue, would you dye yourself blue,
too, Herbert?

Herbert (hoarsely): Anything.
Anything at all.

Alice: Would you love me if I
were blue?

Herbert: Any way. Any color at
all.

Alice (regretfully): Its hardly
worth doing then, is it? I wish I
could find something exciting to
dol

Herbert: You could marry me.

Alice: You know Father would
never allow it.

Herbert (sadly): I know.
That s what— would make it excit-
ing.

Alice: I want to live. Danger-
ously. Before we re all wiped out
by some horrid blight— I want to
taste the delights of . . . Her-
bert!

Herbert: Yes?

Alice: What does meat taste
hke?

Herbert: How do I know?

Alice: Brian is meat. So is Mr.
Caudle. Fido told me.

Herbert: By Jove! The animal
kingdom! So they are.

Alice (dreamily): He said
they’re very good.

Herbert: Getting married

would last longer.

Alice: It’s so comfortable here,
at Mother’s. Of course. I’m madly
—wildly— in love with you . . .
(They embrace.) but I do hke

fantasy and science fiction

having somebody turn down my
bed for me at night . . . and
bring me breakfast in the morn-
ing .. .

Herbert: If only there were a
war going on!

Alice: That’s the most selfish
thing I ever heard! You haven’t
the least regard for anybody . . .
Don’t touch me. (Turning to go.)

Herbert: But Ahce . . .

Alice: I hate wars; they upset
everything. ( Turning to him again
. . . with sudden passion.) Her-
bert! Promise me there won’t be a
war!

Herbert: But darling . . .

Alice: Promise!

Herbert ( helplessly ) : Well—
it isn’t up to me, you know. I’m
only a captain . . .

Alice: (Turning away indig-
nantly.) So that’s what all your
talk of loving me amounts to!

Herbert: Alice . . . !

Alice: Don’t touch me! I’m go-
ing to find a nice cool moist sandy
place, and sit in it.

(She goes out; with a despair-
ing gesture, Herbert follows her.
A. moment later, Edwin and Cau-
dle enter. )

Caudle: But I don’t understand,
Your Excellency— if the onions
don’t want your land— and you say
they have plenty of their own—
and don’t want your oil, or your
heavy industries . . . what do
they want?

Edwin: Tliey want us to be
onions.

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

113

- Caudle: But that s absurd.

Edwin: Of course its absurd.

Caudle: And they’d go to war
for that?

Edwin: No one actually knows.
Of course, they don’t say so. What
they want is for everybody to be
round, and white, and onions.
When as a matter of fact, the only
possible thing for everyone to be
—if they’re to have a decent kind
of life— is long and crisp and car-
rots. Now tliafs something worth
fighting fori Liberty. Freedom.
The good life. And private enter-
prise . . . witli the proper con-
trols, of course. We have to keep
control of chlorophyl. Can’t let
thct get into private hands I

Caudle: The planet is pretty
well divided between yourselves—
and diem?

Edwin: Just about.

Caudle: Evenly— would you
say?

Edwin: Oh . . . we’re strong
enougli, if it comes to that. As a
matter of fact, we’ve been experi-
menting with a new shallow oil
fryer— thougli so far it’s only in the
drawing-board stage, because of
not having an onion to try it on.
But just the same, a war now, at
this point, would be die worst
thing in die world— for both of us.
For one thing— neither of us could
afford it; and before it was over,
we carrots would have whiskers,
and theyd be scallions. And be-
sides . . . (In a low grave voice.)
I think diey plan to use nema-

todes. It s a race suicide, of course.

Caudle: Nematodes . . . ? Let
me think a minute— aren’t those
the tiny worms that all but ruined
the citrus in California back in the
forties?

Edwin: I don’t know about cit-
rus— it isn’t exactly my line. Down
here— they eat vegetables. A kind
of virus. Too small to see . . .
we’ve tried to outlaw them, but—
they won’t agree to it. That’s what
makes me think that . . . Well,
it’s all a mess. We’ll wipe each
other out, and then the spiders can
take over. But it’s sort of sad to
think that no one will even remem-
ber us. No mulch any more. No
bone meal. No clothes made of
rabbit’s fur. No chlorophyl. . . .
Just spider webs. All over.

Caudle: Ugh! You know— I
think we had a way of fumigating
for nematodes back in the States.
I’m not sure if it worked. I could
find out— if I could only get
through to NBC.

Edwin: You can’t get through

. . . ?

Caudle: No. And it’s particu-
larly strange because I understand
there’s good reception here.

Edwin: Maybe you’ve been
jammed.

Caudle: But why? Who would
jam me?

Edwin: Who knows? They
might, I suppose. We could send
you out ourselves, of course, on a
planet-to-planet hook up . . .

Caudle ( eagerly ) : Could you?

114

That would be terrific • . • wait a
minute. How come we ve never
had you on our screens at home?

Edwin; We Ve never broadcast
to you.

Caudle; But you get ours

. . . ?

Edwin; My dear Mr. Caudle,
the vegetable world is, upon the
whole, modest, and even shy. We
are not aggressive. We broadcast
to the insects, and even to the
birds; but not, as a rule, to the
animal kingdom. Our experience
with the rabbits, you know. . . .
Perhaps we overdo it a little. Con-
sider it an idiosyncrasy. I should
be delighted to arrange a broad-
cast for you. Particularly, if you
could find out anything about fu-
migating . . .

Caudle; ‘Good evening Mr. and
Mrs. North and South America,
and all the slips at sea' . . . {He
laughs happily.)

(Potter and Edwina enter.)

Caudle: Mr. Potter— Com-

mander! We re going to broadcast!

Potter: No! Splendid. I'll get to
work on my report right away— or
are we going to ad hb?

Caudle: Better type the report.
You can ad hb to your wife.

Edwtna: You have a wife. Com-
mander?

Potter: Yes, ma'am. Every
Navy man, over a full Lieutenant,
has one.

Edwina: A woman, I suppose?

Potter; Oh, yes, ma'am. Defi-
nitely. She has to be.

fantasy and science fiction

Edwina: What is your wife like,
Mr. Potter?

Potter: Why . . . er . . •

she's a female . . .

(He tries to explain with ges-
tures. Edwina repeats his gestures
\vith bewilderment.)

Edvsona; You mean . . . like
this? How very . . . odd. Bumpy.

Potter: ( embarrassed ) ; Yes,
ma'am.

Edwina: You're not bumpy.

Potter: No, ma'am.

Edwina: (thoughtfully): I see.
Is that how you tell your own from
the others?

Potter: How do you tell one
carrot from another?

Edwina: No two carrots are
alike. There are a thousand differ-
ences . . .

Potter: To a carrot. It's the
same with us.

Edwin: Of course, my dear! Re-
member the rabbits? They all
looked exactly the same— but they
did seem able to recognize one an-
other. And onions! They're just a
faceless mob, as far as I'm con-
cerned.

Caudle (hopefully): To get
back to the broadcast . . .

Potter: Right! What about it?

Caudle: If you ask me, I think
it calls for a bit of a celebration—
our landing the way we did . . .

Potter: And being received so
kindly—

(All bow.)

Caudle: It's a pity we have no
champagne.

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

115

Edwina: Champagne? Whats
that?

Caudle: A kind of bubbly wine.

Edwin (frowning): Wine is
from grapes, isn’t it? Friends of
ours. Relatives.

Edwina: I’m not sure I like this
at alll

Potter: We could break out our
emergency rations.

Caudle: The very thingl

Edwina: Cousin Muscat 1 Aunt
Malaga! Uncle Zinfandel!

(Potter reaches into his pocket
and brings out a tin box. He opens
it, and extracts a can.)

Potter: Here you are. A can
opener?

Caudle ( Bringing one from his
pocket,) Right . . . (He takes
the can, and reads the label.) For
emergency only. U. S. Navy. Con-
centrated carrot juice.

Edwin (thundering): What?

Potter: Oh—oh . . .

Edwina: I think I’m going to
faint.

Edwin: Carrot juice? Guards!
Seize those men! They’re onions!

(The guards rush in.)

act two: Scene 1

(The library in Edwins place in
Carrotopolis— which is, not unrea-
sonably, the capital of Carrotania.
What will a carrofs library look
like? There would be paintings of
vegetables— ancestors and friends
—on the walls; and the head of a
large rabbit over the fireplace. The

usual thorn bushes, and an orna-
mental pot of water. Beyond that,
I am not prepared to go.

(Edwina is sitting on a small
couch, knitting. Edwin is pacing
up and doom the floor. The gry-
phon lies in his basket, near the
fireplace . )

EDwnN: I tell you, my dear, it s a
most uncomfortable pickle. These
—mean creatures— are dangerous.
At the same time . . . they could
be helpful to us. If— I say if, they
were peacefully disposed. . . .
But are they peacefully disposed?

Edwina: From what I’ve seen
on television, they do enjoy a great
deal of shooting, Edwin. And one
does get the suggestion of a cer-
tain amount of— shall we say
coarseness?— in their literature.
One wonders.

Edwin: One does; one does in-
deed. StiU . . . this thing about
fumigating; it could turn out to be
very helpful. Very embarrassing to
the other side.

Edwina: They do drink wine,
dear. I didn’t like that at all.

Edwin: I know. And carrot
juice. ... It gave me a nasty
turn. Of course— they don’t look
like onions . . .

Gryphon: They don’t taste hke
them, either.

Edwin: You— tasted one?

Gryphon: I did.

Edwin: What did he taste like?

Edwina: Was it sharp? Did it
sting your nose?

116

Gryphon; No. It was rubbery,
on the whole— no crackle to it No
crispy-crunchy quaUty at all

Edwin: You see, my dear—

Edwina ( uncertainly ) : Y-yes.
Still . . .

Edwtn: Your daughter seems
rather attracted to them.

Edwina: To tlie naval one. He
has a wife.

Edwin (puzzled): So? What
has that got to do with it?

Edwina: With what, dear?

Edwin: With— with ... I

mean to say, what has his having a
wife got to do with— with what he
is? Or isn’t?

Edwina ( placidly ) : Nothing,
darling. Nothing at all. It seems
it’s part of the regulations. I just
thought I’d mention it.

Edwln: Well, don’t. All you do
is confuse me. ... I feel that we
could learn a great deal from him.
And the other one. That is— if they
aren’t onions.

Edwina: I don’t know what we
could leaiTi from the other one,
dear— except, perhaps, why the
little man on television tries to sell
us toothpaste. Or do you think he
could tell us why there are wars?

Ed\v^n: Who?

Edwina: Why— Mr. Potter, of
course.

Edwin: Don’t be silly, Edwina;
nobody can tell you why there arc
wars. Tliere just are, that’s all.
Tliey’re a ncc'essary part of the
economic structure. They provide
a— a sort of enzyme to the body

FANTASY and SCIENCE FICTION

politic. Besides, we have to sell
our bone meal . . . which re-
minds me; I must make a note to
raise the price again . . . what
with the higher cost of living. No,
my dear— please don’t meddle in
what doesn’t concern you. As long
as there’s no actual fighting . . .

Edwina: Tlien why are they in
prison? The two men, I mean—

Edwtn (simply): Security. The
first duty of a Minister of State is
to make sure that his country is
secure.

Edwina: I sec. And his daugh-
ter?

Edwtn: What the devil has his
daughter got to do with it?

Ed\\tna: She’s growing up, Ed-
win.

Edwin (testily): Of course she’s
growing up. Why shouldn’t she
grow up? Is tliere anything wrong
with that?

Edwina: Really, Edwin— a per-
son can hardly open her mouth
these days, \\athout your jump-
ing down their throat.

Edwin ( gru mpily ) : W ell— I’m
sorry. I’m a little edge, I guess.
Maybe I’d better take Fido out
for a walk.

Gryphon: Uh— uh. I did it be-
fore I came in.

(Edwin sits dowm, and passes
his hand wearily over his fore-
head. )

Ed\\tn; Besides— tliis broad-
cast—

Edwina: I think it would be
quite exciting. . . . Would we be

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

117

asked to speak, do you think?

Edwin: I don’t know. We might.
Possibly.

Edwina: Will it be telecast?

Edwin: I— suppose so.

Edwina: {Glancing up at her
blue top,) I think it should be
done in color. ... Ill have the
dressmaker in tomorrow. Some-
thing in blue, perhaps . . . I’m so
glad that Alice had her teeth
straightened . . . You see, I was
right: I told you the elocution les-
sons were a good idea.

Edwin: Wait a minute . . . I’m
not giving a show. I want informa-
tion— on vital matters. Military,
and economic. Social studies. Fu-
migation. What has that got to do
with elocution lessons?

Ed'svina: And all that poetry
she learned . . . English. Very
good. Old English. They say the
old English is the best. Mr. Laugh-
ton, I think ... a large gentle-
man . . .

Edwin: For heaven’s sake, Ed-
wina!

Edwina (cahnly): Yes, dear
... I know. You want to find out
about nematodes; and about your
new shallow oil fryer. But we’re
not at war— not exactly; and I don’t
know why you give me so little
credit for intelligence. Alice, as I
have said, is growing up. She has
few opportunities to meet what I
would call eligible parties . . .
already I have detected certain
looks between herself and that
young captain— Herbert, I think

his name is. Is there any harm in
showing herself over a planet-to-
planet hook-up? Who knows what
might come of it? Since her teeth
have been straightened . . .

Edwin: Fido— I don’t care
whether you did or didn’t— you’re
going for a walk!

(He. stalks out, followed by a
grumbling gryphon.)

ACT TWO: Scene 2

(A cell, nt night. There is a little
light, but not much. Potter and
Caudle are lying on their cots.)

Potter: You shouldn’t have
read the label, old man. That’s
what did it.

Caudle: How could I tell? I
thought it would be chicken con-
somme . . . and just when I had
the greatest broadcast of the Ages
lined up! If only I could get
through to NBC . . .

Potter: What good would that
do?

Caudle: They’d think of some-
thing. They’d appeal to Edwin’s
better nature.

Potter: What is the nature of a
carrot, Caudle?

Caudle (miserably): I don’t
know.

(The door of the cell is un-
locked, and Herbert enters. He
carries a lantern, which he sets on
the table.)

Herbert (morosely): Tliere is

118

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

a lady to see you, gentlemen . . .

(He steps aside, to allow Alice
to enter. Caudle and Potter both
rise.)

Caudle: Miss Alice!

Alice: {With her fingers to her
lips,) Sh! Not so loud. {To the
captain, ) Thank you Herbert. You
can leave us now . . .

Herbert: Mind you, Alice— this
is contrar>' to your father s orders,
and against my better judg-
ment . . .

Alice: I know, darling. It’s di-
vinely, utterly mad . . . run
along, pet.

Herbert: I shall wait for you
outside the door. All you need do
is scream.

(He goes out, and closes the
door after him.)

Alice {gaily): You wouldn’t
hurt me, would you?

Potter: Glad to have you
aboard, ma’am.

Alice: I knew you wouldn’t.
{She seats herself on one of the
stools. ) They say that you’re dan-
gerous vegetarians. That you— eat
carrots. {She shudders,) Do you
really?

Potter: Well . . • you see,
ma’am . . .

Alice: I don’t believe it. Any-
way, I sent the guard away;
tliere’s only Herbert. We’re all
alone . . . practically.

Potter: And you’re not afraid?

Alice: You’re much too nice to
eat poor little me!

Potter: Thank you, ma’am.

Caudle: You, yourself, are a
vegetarian. Miss Alice.

Alice {indignant): I’m not. I’m
a vegetable. It’s not the same
thing at all!

Caudle: Just answer me this:
What will happen to you when
you die?

Alice: I’ll be buried— of course.
In the National Compost Heap.

Caudle: From whicm the rich,
steaming soil is taken to nourish
the young carrots . . . riglit?

Alice: Of course—

Caudle: Which then— which
then, mind > 011— must of necessity
feed upon your decayed flesh—
from which, I might add, the spirit
has long since fled—

Alice {bemused): Why . . .
of course. Why— how clever you
are. I am a vegetarian, aren’t I?
Or, at least— I was. And of course,
the new little carrots still are . . .

Caudle: Not only that. Canni-
bals!

Alice: How madly amusing!
Cannibals. You’re perfectly right.
I really did eat my— my grandpar-
ents, didn’t I? {Her face falls.) I
missed mother and father, though.

Potter: I should hope so!

Alice: Oh— but don’t you see—?
The whole point lies in eating
one’s parents! Why— it solves eve-
rything. It would be so satisfying
to a young girl’s psyche to have
her father under her belt ... as
it were . . . wouldn’t it?

Catole {surprised): Have you
been tlirough analysis?

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

119

Alice: Of course. Haven’t you?

Caudle: Yes . . .

Alice: Its so nice to be able to
talk the same language, isn’t it
. . . {She rises, and begins to
move restlessly around the cell.)
Whose parents did I eat, I won-
der?

Caudle: An idea, merely. A pa-
rental symbol.

Alice: My analyst says symbols
don’t satisfy . . .

Caudle: We must look to the
Oedipus . . .

Alice: My analyst says the trou-
ble is my mother has a blue top.

Caudle: Exactly. The active
competition of an adult par-
ent . . .

Alice: It tends to make me ag-
gressive.

Caudle: Naturally. Feeling that
your mother has an unfair advan-
tage . . .

Alice {to Potter): Kiss me!

Potter: Eh? What?

Auce: Kiss me!

Potter: Good Lord!— Really

. . . I . . .

Alice: Are you afraid? It isn’t
even Spring. I don’t come into
blossom till July.

Potter: I know. But . . .

Alice: Am I not beautiful? Am
I not to be desired? By the Navy?

Potter: Oh yes! Yes indeed!
But . . .

Alice: I could have your head,
Potter. On a silver tray. Like Sa-
lome. I will kiss your mouth, loka-
naan . . . Potter.

Potter: I know. But . . .

Alice {softly): 1 could set you
free . . .

Caudle: For heaven’s sake, kiss
her, and get it over with.

Potter: But . . .

(She kisses him. Potter draws
back, and looks around dizzily.
He turns, and kisses her again.)

Potter: {Drawing a deep
breath. ) Hmm. You smell so good.
Like a grocery.

Alice: {Abo a little dizzy.) It
feels like April. Is this love. Potter?

Potter {hoarsely): How can I
feel this way about a carrot?

Alice: I feel a strange heat. Not
like the sun . . .

Potter: Like a garden. In tlie
summer.

Alice: I don’t feel at all like a
vegetable . . .

Potter: I wouldn’t have

thought it possible.

Caudle ( indignantly ) : Look.
How about getting us out of here?

Alice: Potter— say something!
What has happened to us?

Potter: I don’t know. Wait.

(He brings out a small book,
and leafs through it rapidly.)

Alice: What is it, darling?

Potter: Service Manual—

Alice: Does it say sometliing
about us?

Potter: Wait a minute— here it
is {reading): ‘They salute mutu-
ally, but in any case there should
be no hesitation on the part of
either, or delay in rendering the
salute . .

120

(They arc about to embrace
each otlier again, when Herbert
sticks his head in at the door.)

Herbert: Time is up, folks.

Alice: Oh? . . . Yes ... Is it?
I suppose so. Must I go?

Herbert: What’s the matter?
Don’t you feel good?

Alice: Of course, I feel . . .
wonderful. Divinely, madly won-
derful . . . goodbye, my Potter.
Goodbye, darling. I’ll be back. I’ll
be back quickly ... to set you
free . . . Don’t forget me . . .
you’ll see . . .

(She rushes out. Herbert fol-
lows her more slowly, shutting the
door after him. )

Herbert ( disgustedly ) : Oh, for
heaven’s sake!

(Caudle turns to Potter, and
looks him over with enthusiasm.)

Caudle: Well— that’s the Navy
for you. What have you fellows
got that I haven’t got?

Potter: Blossoms in our hair
... I sure hope she gets us out
of here.

Caudle: I have a broadciist to
do. Tlie biggest sponsor tie-up in
histoiy. Eleven hundred stations,
inelucling Liberia— and the State
of Georgia. If I don’t make it . . .
(He shakes his head gloomily.)

Potter: Cheer up, old man.
You’ll be there. You’ll make it.
She’ll get us out all right—

Caudle: You really— hke the
girl, don’t you?

Potter: Yes.

Caltdle: Well— it’s none of my

fantasy and science fiction

business, of course— but— what
about Mrs. Potter?

Potter: ^Vhat about her?

Caudle: She isn’t going to like
this prett>' vegetable of yours.

Potter: Caudle— could you be
jealous of a— a stalk of celery?

Caudle: I’m not married—

Potter: But suppose you were?

Caudle: I don’t know. Could
be. If I found my wife in bed with
it—

Potter (hotly): We’re not in
bed yet!

Caudle: She doesn’t blossom
till July. It’s only February.

Potter: I wish we w'ere safe at
home. There’s something frighten-
ing— about being in love with a
carrot!

Caudle (sniffing): Smell any-
thing, Commander?

Potter ( uncertainly ) : N—

no . . .

Caudle: Funny . . . (sniffing.)
I thought for a moment I smelled
onions—

Potter: Tliat’s not very hke-

ly . . .

Caudle: Just an idea, 1 guess
. . . You know^ it makes you
think. Suppose God is a root?

Potter: Then wiiat are we?

Caudle: I don’t know\ (Rub-
bing his eyes.) My eyes are wat-
ering.

Potter: Mine, too . . . You
know^ l—dv smell onions . . .

( The cell door opens, and Spin-
dle and two other onions, dis-
guised as caiTots, appear.)

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

121

Spindle; Gentlemen—

Potter: Eh?— Who are you?—

Spindle {bowing): You are
free, gentlemen—

Caudle: She did manage it,
then!

Spindle; This way. Hurry,
please—

Potter: {Rubbing his eyes)
Where is she? I can t see, very
well.

Spindle: She is waiting for you,
sir—

Potter: Come along, then—
Dammit, Tm crying.

(He strides out, followed by
Caudle. As Caudle passes Spindle,
he stops to sniff. )

Caudle {suspiciously): Thats
funny— (CaHmg) Potter!

(TTiere is the sound of a blow
beyond the door, and a groan. A
leek steps up behind Caudle, and
puts his hand over his mouth. At
the same time, Spindle hits him
over the head with a sap. Caudle
goes limp; the leek supports him.)

Spindle: Good. Splendid. Take
them both down the back way—
Our agent is waiting witli a market
wagon . . . what about the other
one? The carrot?

(The leek points; Spindle reach-
es outside the door, and drags into
the cell the inert form of Herbert. )

Spindle: How fortunate that all
the guards were withdrawn— ex-
cept this gentleman. Run along,
Comrade ... I shall wait here.
Who knows? Perhaps our snare
will trap an even rarer prize . . .

^(The leek leaves, carrying Cau-
dle with him. Spindle closes the
door, and sets liimself to wait— a
hunched and fateful figure. In a
moment, Alice’s voice, light and
joyous, is heard outside the cell. )

Alice: Potter! Caudle! Every-
thing’s arranged . . . !

(She bursts in— and stops short
as she sees Spindle.)

Alice: What?— Where’s Potter?
Who are you? That odor! {She
puts her hands before her eyes.)
My eyes—

( She sees Herbert lying on tlie
floor; she stares at him a moment,
then turns to Spindle, who makes a
motion to reveal himself. Alice
screams, and turns to run; it is too
late. Spindle grasps her.

Spindle: Aha, my pretty little
root— of the celery family . . .

Alice: {In a feeble croak.)
Help! Papal

Spindle: It is useless to scream;
there is no one to hear you. Or
have you forgotten that you sent
the guards home— yourself? Your
Earth-men friends are already on
their way to the Little Father in
Onionapolis. In three days you
will join them— in the dungeons of
the Ek^halote.

Alice: No . . .

Spindle: But first— there is a lit-
tle experiment, with a petite mar-
mite . . .

Alice: Papal

Spindle: Without the leeks, of
course. Simply, the marrow-bone,
and one carrot—

122

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Alice: Ohl

(She swoons. Spindle stands
looking down at her wdtli relish,
and mbbinghis hands.)

ACT two: Scene 3

( O'Dors office, in Onionapolis,
&Dor is seated at his desk, with
Spindle beside him. Before him,
with bandages around their heads,
sit Potter and Caudle.)

O'Dor: So you see, gentlemen,
we had no choice; the stakes were
too high— being no less than war
or peace. It was unhkely that the
carrots would give you up of their
own accord; and so, we simply— ah
—took steps to expedite matters.

Caudle: {Feeling his head.)
With a piece of iron pipe?

(O'Dor looks questioningly at
Spindle, who sh^es his head.)

O’Dor: My dear Mr. Caudle,
we do not use pipe of any kind.
Besides, my agents tell me that
you went with them willingly,
and witliout remonstrance.

Potter: We were out cold.

O'Dor: Exactly. You gave no
sign of complaint. We were ob-
liged to interpret your silence as
best we could. . . . Besides— you
had no business in Onion territory.

Caudle ( indignantly ) : We
weren’t in Onion territory!

(O’Dor looks at Spindle who
shakes his head.)

O’Dor: Come, come, my dear
Mr. Caudle. In the first place, your

friend has just admitted that you
were both of you unconscious;
therefore, you couldn’t possibly
have known where you were. In
the second place— where are you
now? In Onion territory. There-
fore, to argue about where you
were, when you didn’t know
where you were, is unrealistic.

Potter: All right; so now we
know. What’s all this about war
and peace?

O’Dor: {Sitting back, and phe^
ing the tips of his fingers togeth-
er. ) Mr. Potter, it is a fact that of
all the people of this planet, we
onions are the most peaceful, the
most freedom-lo\Tng, and the most
cultured. Spindle— give Mr. Potter
a sample.

Spindle: {Rises; singing.) ‘On
the Road to Mandalay, where the
flying fishes play, and the dawn
comes up like tliunder over China
cross the bay—’

O’Dor: That’s enough. {Spindle
sits down again. ) So tell me, Mr.
Potter of the U. S. Nav>^— how do
you make war?

Potter: How do we what?

O’Dor {patiently): Make war.
How do you destroy whole armies
—cities, countries with all their in-
habitants? Without, at the same
time, annihilating yourselves? Un-
fortunately, there is no blight that
will make compost out of carrots
without doing the same for onions.
I have to think of my people.

Spindle: God bless you, Little
Father.

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

123

O’Dor: Tliank you. {He sigJis,)
We are still in the drawing-board
stage. We need technicians.

Potter: Don’t look at nw.
Count me out of that one.

Caudle: Tlicres a very good
program eveiy Sunday afternoon,
called “Do It Yourself.” You could
tune in on it, and get yoiu* techni-
cal advice that way.

O’Dor: We do not allow recep-
tion from the outside. Tliat way,
we do not get any wrong ideas.
We listen only to ourselves.

Potter: You won’t get any
wrong ideas from me, either.

O’Dor: My dear Commander,
you must understand that the
terms Right and Wrong can only
be used in reference to the destiny
of our people, and must be always
at the service of Didactic Material-
ism. The End justifies the Means:
when onions rule the world, who
would wish to be celer>'? I offer
you an important place in history.

Potter: The only place I want
to be is next to a girl w^th a carrot
top who smells like a garden after
rain.

O’Dor (surprised): That I did
not expect. However— let us not
grow emotional. Perhaps you are
closer to her than you think. . . •
Will you teach us to make war.
Commander? You see— I am giv-
ing you another chance. Opportu-
nity rarely knocks so often.

Potter: I will not.

O’Dor: You will not help us to
detonate the h>'drogen bomb?

Potter: Good Lordl Have you
the bomb?

O’Dor: We have invented it
. . . but we haven’t been able to
make it go off yet. You won't help
us?

Potter: I should say not!

O’Dor: Ver>^ w^ell; I am sorr>^
Perhaps we will find a w^ay to
make you change your mind.
There is a little experiment w^e
have in mind— with a pot of boil-
ing water. You wuuld not care to
see your— shall we say girl-friend?
—floating about with only a mar-
row bone for company? No? . . .
Ah well. Think it over. Spindle-
take these gentlemen to the so-
larium, and entertain them. Show
them the vampire marigolds . . .
and the lizard-eating oleander.
They might be interested to wutch
the muerte vine digest its daily
mouse. . . . And on the way,
send in the other prisoner. And
now, gentlemen— if you please.
(He rises.) We shall meet again.
A pot of hot water. (The other
three also rise.) I believe it is
called a petite marmite. Good day
to >X)U.

Spindle: Come.

( Potter and Caudle follow Spin-
dle out. O’Dor takes down a large
atomizer of perfume, and sprays
himself liberally; then he arranges
his uniform; after which he seats
himself at his desk, and bends a
stem but lofty gaze at the door. It
opens, and Alice enters. She is
frightened and indignant. She

124

stands in tlie doorway, silent and
morose. )

O’Dor: Well, welll Come in-
come in, young lady. {As Alice
hesitates. ) Don’t be bashful— I
won’t eat you.

(He rises, and walks toward
her. As she moves out of his way,
he circles behind her and shuts
the door. She turns to look; then
resigns herself to her fate, and
moves toward the desk.)

O’Dor: {Walking around he-
hind her, looking her over.) Sit
down, my dear, sit down. This is
really a pleasure. ( Alice seats her-
self reluctantly in front of the
desk. ) So you are Edwin s daugh-
ter. How is my dear friend, the
Secretary of the Interior? He has-
n’t answered my last note ... No
doubt an oversight, I dare say he’ll
be glad to hear that you are in
good health . . . still. But one
never knows— does one? Here to-
day, and gone tomorrow. Still, if
one is smart . . .

Alice: Why don’t you say what
you mean, and get it over wth?

O’Dor: I am saying it, my dear.
I am saying it. Give me time. . . .
But that’s the way with you carrots
—so impulsive . . .

( Alice does not reply. )

O’Dor: {After a moments
pause.) Of course— we know that
you have been quietly mobilizing
for months. ... I can’t imagine
why. We ourselves have only one
wish— to be at peace with all the
world. I suppose you wouldn’t

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

care to tell me the present where-
abouts of the Carrot Eighth Ar-
my? {No answer.) Or the air
force? We have ways of finding
out, of course. But it would be so
much easier if you were to tell us.

(Alice sits in tight-lipped si-
lence. )

O’Dor {carelessly): By the way
—your friend Mr. Potter was here.
He just left.

(Alice is silent.)

O’Dor: Young people are so
stupid. Their silence gives them
away. Do you think we don’t know
about your little affair? Mr. Potter,
also, was singularly uncooperative.
Too bad. We might have to . . •

Alice: You wouldn’t darel

O’Dor: No? Why not? Do you
think we are afraid? After the pro-
tests we are accustomed to get
from your father, nothing can
frighten us. However— speaking of
your father— we have not received
the 20,000 tons of bone meal which
we ordered. Why is that? Nor has
he agreed to the necessary slight
rise in the price of ammonium sul-
phate.

Alice: Mr. Potter had nothing
to do with it.

O’Dor: Possibly . . . possibly.
But I cannot help but associate
Mr. Potter’s sudden arrival in Car-
rotania with this new— shall I say?
—unwillingness to cooperate.
There are ways, of course, of mak-
ing people more willing. My assist-
ant is showing Mr. Potter the
muerte vines.

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

125

Alice (horrified): Not the
meat-eaters!

O'Dor: Why not? Mr. Potter is
meat— I believe? But of course
. . . if you have something you
would like to share with us . . .

Alice: Wliat do you mean?
How? In what way?

O’Dor: (Coming close to her,)
Hmm. You have a lovely skin, my
dear. So moist and tender. No
wrinkles.

Alice: Will you let him go, if I

... if I ... ?

O'Dor: Yes, yes . . . you smell
good, too. Like a salad . . . very
fragrant. But delicate.

Alice: WTiat do you want to
know? Our army . . .

O’Dor: Yes, yes, the army. I
have heard that you carrots have
ways of making love ... is it
true? . . . certain ways—

(He caresses the back of her
neck. )

Alice (hurriedly): The navy
. . . the marines . . .

O’Dor: We could make such
beautiful communion together.

Alice: What are you doing?

O'Dor: What fresluiess! What
youth! I love you.

Alice: You re mad . . .

O’Dor: Its too strong for me
... I must have you!

Alice: Don’t touch me . . . the
air force . . .

O’Dor: Please ... no more
statistics. They are published,
anyway, ever>' day in your news-
papers. \Mien we are ready, we

will strike , . . First, we lull you
to sleep. Then— when you are snor-
ing— forward march! Kiss me.

Alice: Never!

OT)or: My blood is boiling!

Alice: Odious onion!

( O’Dor grabs her, they struggle
for a moment, and she falls to her
knees. He steps back.)

Alice (weeping): Visi dorte,
visi damore. I lived only for love,
and for joy, and to do a little sing-
ing ... I harmed no one. Why
has this happened to me?

O’Dor: I am suffocating . . .

Alice: Ah me— the happy gar-
dens of my youth, the gentle show -
ers, the warm sun of summer in
which I grew, the scented air
. . . my young heart trembling
with deliglit at the first dandelion.
. . . Was it for this I gave my
blossoms to the breeze? What a
way to treat me!

O’Dor: You are torturing me.
Get up.

Alice: Was it for this I spent
my virtuous childhood in tlie com-
pany of the little celeries, my cous-
ins? And played my girlish games
among the cucumbers? To come to
a breathless end in tlie anns of
my enemy? The enemy of my
country?

O’Dor: Stop ciydng! What has
your country got to do with it?
Be a little realistic.

Alice: Oh, heaven!

O’Dor: You do not realize your
situation. One word from me— and
you are in the soup.

126

Alice: I would ^ thousand
times liefer—

O’Dor: Or— what is perhaps
more to the point— your friend Mr.
Potter is left alone with the mari-
golds . . .

Alice; NoI Oh nol

O’Dor: Ah— that fetches you.
You really care for him, don't you?

Alice; More than life.

OT>or; All tlie better. It is
much more exciting to make love
to a woman already in love. It
adds a kind of seasoning— a sauce,
as it were . . .

Alice: You— you nettlel You
noisome weed!

O’Dor: Splendid— splendid. So
sweet, and so hot. Almost Spanish.

Alice; Is this the way you make
war? On helpless women and chil-
dren?

O'Dor; (Taken aback.) War?
Who is making war? I am paying
you compliments!

Alice; They are odious to me.

O'Dor; Very well . . . we will
try Mr. Potter in the muerte
vines. Have you ever seen them
work? First they grasp their vic-
tim like this. (He grasps hold of
her. ) Then they twine about him;
then, slowly, they shred the flesh
into . . .

Alice; No— No ... I canT

stand it. I can't fight any more.

O'Dor: You give up? You give
in?

Alice (dully): Will he have a
safe conduct back to my father?

O'Dor: Yes, yes . . .

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

Alice; Will there be one for
me? .... Afterwards?

O'Dor; Afterwards.

Alice; Write it out . . .

O'Dor; (Going to his desk, and
writing.) You do not trust me?
Some day you will be ashamed of
that. For Mr. Potter— a pass; also
for Mr. Caudle. And now— for
Miss Alice ... (He rings a buz-
zer; the door opens and Spindle
enters.) Spindle— you will let the
Earth-men go. And later, you
will see that this lady is returned
to her own people— just like Pal-
mieri.

Spindle; Mrs. Palmieri?

O'Dor: That's the one. Just like
Palmieri— you understand?

Spindle: (Making a circle of
his fingers.) I understand, Little
Father.

O'Dor: Right?

Spindle; Right. Just like Pal-
mieri. Mrs.

( He goes out. )

O'Dor: Now— oh most divine
creature . . .

(He rises, and moves upon Al-
ice. She has backed against the
desk; her hands, groping, have
found a paper cutter; she clutches
it.) ^

O'Dor: At last— you are all
mine . . .

( As he reaches for her, she stabs
him.)

Alice: It is thus a carrot kisses!

( He falls. She looks at the knife
in horror, sniflFs it, shudders, and
tlirows it away. Then she takes

A PRIM OF CARROTS

127

tvvo candles from the desk, lights
them, and places one at the dead
onions head, and one at his feet
She backs slowly to the door,
wipes her streaming eyes, blows
her nose; and turning, goes swiftly
out)

ACT two: Scene 4

( The corridor outside 0*Do/s of-
fice. Potter and Caudle hurry up,
while Alice comes out of the door,
still wiping her eyes, and shuts it
behind her. )

Potter: Alicel

Alice: Tliank God you’re safe!

(She falls into his arms.)

Potter: You are crying?

Alice: Its nothing. It’s only on-
ion juice. Here are your passes—
go quickly— botli of youl

Potter: And you?

Alice: My pass is for later. I
must wait for a little while. Its
better so . . .

Potter: But why?

Alice: If I go with you now,
they’ll be suspicious. I must try to
save you—

Potter: NoI If we have to die-
then we’ll die together!

Alice: No, my dear. That
wouldn’t help my country— or this
little world— OT even me. You see
—I’ve become very sensible; real-
istic tliey call it here. I’m not im-
portant— but you are; because you
have the gift of peace. Think of all
the wonderful things you can

teach us ... to keep the world
safe for celery . . . the celery
family. . . . Don’t you see? It
doesn’t matter about 7ne; I’m just
a girl who had a good time in the
world; and maybe it’s over now
. . . maybe that’s all there is,
there isn’t any more. ‘The loaves
are falling, so am I . . .’ Goodbye;
think of me . . , and never ask
the price of freedom. I’ll try to
catch up to you at the frontier. If
I don’t come— be kind to carrots
—for my sake. Go now— and God
bless you.

Caudle: (Looking at his

watch . ) I can just make my broad-
cast . . .

Alice: ‘I strove with none, for

none was wortli my strife.
Nature I loved, and, after Nature,

Art:

I warmed both hands before the

fire of life . . .’

( Potter takes her hands in his
and gazes at her. )

Caudle ( impatiently ) : Come
on— come on—

Alice: ‘It sinks, and I am ready
to depart.’

Caudle: We’ll only just make it.

Alice: Go now; and hurry.

Potter: Farewell!

(Potter and Caudle hurry off.
A moment later six leeks enter,
headed by Spindle, all dressed as
chefs, each carrying a huge spoon.
They pass Alice without looking
at her, and go into O’Dor’s office.
She flattens herself in terror
against the wall. In the office

128

FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

there is a silence, broken by a sud-
den outcry. The door is flung
open, and the chefs emerge. They
see Alice, and slowly, inexorably
bear down on her. . . .

(In the darkness, a broadcast.
There is the crackle of static; then
Caudle's voice.)

Caudles voice; Calling NBC.

. . . Calling NBC. Come in.
Earth. Come in. Tliis is Caudle on
Venus. Are you there, NBC? This
is the historic moment, for which
mankind has waited since the
world began. You are about to
hear the first voice from another
planet ... by courtesy of South-
west Oil, Heidelberg (Wisconsin)
Beer. ... (As though to some-
one in the studio. ) What s thi^jt? I
can’t hear you . . . (Broadcast-
ing again) There’s a certain
amount of excitement here, folks
—which you can easily understand
under the circumstances. Stand by
now. In a minute, across thirty
million miles of darkness and
empty space, you will hear tlie
voice of ... of ... (To some-
one in the studio.) What? She
what? Alice? In a soup? . . .

(Tlie static takes over.)

EPILOGUE

(The cashiers desk at a Super
Market. Mrs. Potter has brought
a market basket up to be counted.
The cashier is a middle-aged lady.
Mrs. Potter is not unattractive. )

Mrs. Potter; Lets see . . •
one peas, one cauliflower . • •

Cashier: You must be very
happy to have your husband back
again, Mrs. Potter. And all those
write-ups in the papers! My good-
ness! Did he really get to Venus,
like they said? I missed the broad-
cast.

Mrs. Potter: Yes, he did. One
ketchup—

Cashier; He looks a little thin,
in his pictures. I guess maybe they
didn’t have much to eat up there.

Mrs. Potter: I guess not . . .

Cashier: What was it like?

Mrs. Potter; He hasn’t said
much . . . and four dozen onions,
please . . •

Cashier ( astonished ) : Four
dozen?

Mrs. Potter; That’s right. He
—he eats them. Raw.

Cashier; Raw? They say on-
ions are good for colds.

Mrs. Potter: I know.

Cashier; Tliere’s lots of things
like that. Like carrots make your
hair curly.

Mrs. Potter; He won’t touch
carrots.

Cashier: He won’t? Not even
cooked?

Mrs. Potter: Not even. I
served a petite marmite the other
night, and he got up and left the
table.

Cashier: No! Now isn’t that
something!

Mrs. Potter; One sack of peat
moss.

A PRIDE OF CARROTS

129

Cashier: Whats that for?

Mrs. Potter: He says he’s got
blossoms in his hair.

Casiher: Humph! . . . {She

looks at Mrs, Potter, then Hngs
up the charges, with a slightly be-
fuddled air. ) That’ll be $3.47, Mrs.
Potter, ril have someone take
them out to the car for you.

Mrs. Potter: {Paying her.)
Thank you. . . .

( She leaves. )

Cashier: Goodbye now. {She
takes hold of a lock of her own
hair, and peers up at it. She lets it
fall back into place, and shrugs
her shoulders helplessly . ) Blos-
soms? ... In February?

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INDEX TO VOLUME SEVENTEEN— JULY-DECEMBER 1959

Aarons, Edward S.: The Mak-
ers of Destiny (novelet) . . Sept. 89
Aldiss, Brian W.: Space Burial

(verse) July 73

Anderson, Poul: Brave to be a

King Aug. 53

Operation Incumbus Oct. 60

Arthur, Robert: The DeviPs

Garden Sept 55

Asimov, Isaac: Battle of the

Eggheads July 43

The Ultimate Split of the Sec-
ond Aug. 25

Obituary Aug. 103

Varieties of the Infinite Sept. 40

The Height of Up Oct. 16

C for Celeritas Nov. 100

Thin Air Dec. 54

Austin, Mary: Night Thought

(verse) Sept 54

Ayme, Marcel: The Walker-

Through-Walls Aug. 44

State of Grace Dec. 53

Banks, Raymond E.: Rabbits to

the Moon July 106

Barr, Stephen: The Homing
Instincts of Joe Vargo

(short novelet) Dec. 64

Beaumont, Charles: The See-
ing Eye Dec. 93

Bester, Alfred: The Pi Man . Oct 80

Blish, James: The Masks Nov. Ill

Bonnet, Leslie: Game With a

Goddess Sept 125

Borgese, Elizabeth Mann: For

Sale, Reasonable July 70

Briarton, Grendel: Ferdinand

Feghoot, XVI-XXI July - Dec.

Brode, Anthony: Ballad of

Outer Space (verse) Nov. 95

Buck, Doris Pitkin: Classical

Query (verse) July 86

Clifton, Mark: What Now,

Little Man? (novelet) .... Dec. 5

Collier, John: After the Ball . . Nov. 115

Coupling, J. J.: In 2063 She

Ceased To Be (verse) Oct 94

CuNNiNGTON, JoHN: Up, Down,

and Sideways Sept 51

Davis, Hassoldt: The Pleasant

Woman, Eve Oct 76

Davidson, Avram: Author, Au-
thor July 54

Dagon Oct 95

Dickson, Gordon R.: Guided

Tour (verse) Oct. 59

Edmondson, G. C.: From Cari-

bou to Carrie Nation

Nov.

25

Emshwiller, Carol: Day at the

Beach

Aug.

35

Fast, Howard: The Cold, Cold

Box

July

119

The Martian Shop

Finney, Charles G.: The Gila-

Nov.

5

shrikes

Oct

54

Graves, Robert: Interview with

a Dead Man

Sept

. 87

Heinlein, Robert A.: Starship

Soldier (Part one)

Oct

103

Starship Soldier (Conclusion)
Henderson, Zenna: And a Litde

Nov.

51

Child

Oct

28

Knight, Damon: From the

Horse’s Mouth

July

74

The Innocence of Evil

Aug.

91

To Be Continued

Oct

44

Without Hokum

Nov.

96

Near Misses from All Over . .
McClintic, Winona: To Give

Dec.

90

Them Beauty for Ashes

Sept

65

Miller, Wade: I Know a Good

Hand Trick

Nov.

46

Nathan, Robert: A Pride of

Carrots

Dec.

100

Neyroud, Gerard: The Terra

Venusian War of 1979 ...

Dec.

45

pANGBORN, Edgar: The Red

Hills of Summer Sept 5

Pettis, Nina: Witch’s Charms Sept. 52

Powell, Sonny: Black Nebulae Sept 50

Reed, Kit: Empty Nest Aug. 95

Rice, Jane: The Rainbow Gold Dec. 80

Roberts, Jane: Impasse July 77

Russ, Joanna: Nor Custom Stale Sept. 75

Russell, Ray: The Rosebud . . . Aug. 90

Sanders, Winston P.: Pact .... Aug. 118

Schenck, Jr., Hilbert: Me

(verse) Aug. 102

Snip, Snip (verse) Sept 86

Stanton, Will: Who Is Going

to Cut the Barber’s Hair? . Sept 66

Sturgeon, Theodore: The Man

Who Lost the Sea Oct 5

Sycamore, H. M.: Success Story July 87

Tabakow, Lou: Harley Helix . . July 84

Verne, Jules: Fritt-Flacc Nov. 40

Watson, Billy: The Man Who

Told Lies Sept 53

Williams, Jay: Operation Lady-
bird (short novelet) Aug. 5

Worthington, Will: Plenitude Nov. 29

Young, Robert F.i To Fell a

Tree (novelet) July 5

130

Two years in a row, now, The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction has been awarded the
Hugo as the world* s best science
fiction magazine. The award is
made by the annual World Science
Fiction Convention, on the basis
of voting by the entire membership,
and it is a signal honor in the field.
Unlike the movie industry Oscar,
or the mystery writers* Edgar,
the Hugo comes in a different design
each year. The one to the right is
the latest model, tenderly imported
to our office from the 1959
Convention in Detroit.

It is always gratifying, of course, to receive awards, but we are well
aware that a past honor is not a guarantee of future excellence, and we
are not lounging comfortably around our offices basking in the reflected
silvery sheen of our latest trophy. F&SF has always provided the widest
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title. We have brought you virtually every top writer in the science fiction
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Collier, and Aldous Huxley, for example have been among the contributors
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